[3][8] The asteroid was named for Soviet scientist and pioneer in radar astronomy, Vladimir Kotelnikov.
[3][a] In October 2013, a rotational lightcurve of Kotelnikov was obtained from photometric observations in the R-band by astronomers with the Palomar Transient Factory in California.
[7] In March 2015, Swiss and French astronomers René Roy, Raoul Behrend and José De Queiroz measured a period of 4.9078 hours and an amplitude of 0.21 magnitude (U=2).
[3] According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Kotelnikov measures 10.937 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of 0.213,[5][6] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.24 and calculates a diameter of 9.85 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 12.2.
He was a long-time director of the Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics and vice-president of the former USSR Academy of Science.