It was discovered on 9 March 1956, by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth at the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory in Heidelberg, Germany.
[5] Pilcher is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method (HCM) to its proper orbital elements (Nesvorný, Milani and Knežević).
[2] In March 2017, a first rotational lightcurve of Pilcher was obtained from photometric observations at the Flarestar Observatory on the island of Malta.
Lightcurve analysis gave a short rotation period of 2.842 hours with a brightness amplitude of 0.10 magnitude, indicative for a rather spherical shape (U=2+).
[5] This minor planet was named after American astronomer Frederick Pilcher, a retired professor of Physics at Illinois College and prolific lightcurve photometrist at his Organ Mesa Observatory (G50) in New Mexico.