It was discovered on 29 September 1934, by Dutch astronomer Hendrik van Gent at Leiden Southern Station, annex to the Johannesburg Observatory in South Africa.

[2] Kaiser is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements.

[9] This asteroid was named in honor of Dutch astronomer Frederik Kaiser (1808–1872), the director of the Leiden Observatory from 1837 to 1872.

[4][5][6] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for carbonaceous asteroids of 0.057 and calculates a diameter of 28.42 kilometers, with an absolute magnitude of 11.46[3] Two rotational lightcurves for Kaiser were obtained from photometric observations by American astronomer Brian D. Warner at his Palmer Divide Observatory in Colorado (see video in § External links).

The lightcurves from January 2006 and November 2012, gave a rotation period of 13.02 and 13.23 hours and a variation in brightness of 0.32 and 0.13 magnitude, respectively (U=3/2+).