It was discovered on 20 September 1916, by German astronomer Max Wolf at the Heidelberg Observatory in southwest Germany.

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

[5][11] In October 2006, a rotational lightcurve of Burnhamia was obtained from photometric observations by Robert Buchheim at the Altimira Observatory (G76) in California.

[13] According to the surveys carried out by the NEOWISE mission of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the Japanese Akari satellite, and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS, Burnhamia measures (61.278±0.303), (61.44±2.13) and (66.65±2.4) kilometers in diameter and its surface has an albedo of (0.071±0.008), (0.082±0.007) and (0.0698±0.005), respectively.

[6][7][9][8] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.0602 and a diameter of 66.64 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 9.55.