It was discovered on 14 June 1980, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona.
[10]: 23 In 2005, two rotational lightcurves of Gibbs were obtained from photometric observations by Italian amateur astronomers Federico Manzini and Roberto Crippa.
[8] In December 2016, Robert Stephens obtained a well-defined lightcurve at his Trojan Station (U81) that gave a period of 3.189 hours and an amplitude of 0.26 magnitude (U=3).
[9][a] According to the survey carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, Gibbs measures between 5.04 and 5.99 kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo between 0.283 and 0.30,[6][7] while the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes an albedo of 0.23 – derived from 25 Phocaea, the Phocaea family's largest member and namesake – and calculates a diameter of 6.35 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 13.2.
[4] This minor planet was named in memory of American mathematician and physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903), who contributed to the studies of asteroids through his work on orbits.