It was discovered on 20 September 1998, by Belgian astronomer Eric Elst at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
The asteroid was named for English physicist and Nobel laureate Lord Rayleigh.
It is a member of the small group of Zhongguo asteroids, located in the Hecuba gap (2 : 1 mean motion resonance with Jupiter) near 3.27 AU.
Contrary to the nearby unstable Griqua group, the orbits of the Zhongguos are stable over half a billion years.
[1][6] This minor planet was named after English physicist John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (Lord Rayleigh; 1842–1919), who discovered the noble gas argon and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1904 (also see list of laureates).