It was discovered on 15 May 1985, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell Observatory's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, United States.
[4][14]: 23 [b] The asteroid orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 1.8–3.3 AU once every 4 years and 2 months (1,507 days).
[13] In August 2006, a rotational lightcurve of Geake was obtained from photometric observations by American astronomer Brian Warner at his Palmer Divide Observatory (716) in Colorado.
[5][6][7][8][9][10] Contrary to the results obtained by the space-based observatories, the Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20, derived from the family's namesake,[b] and consequently calculates a much shorter diameter of 6.50 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 13.3, as the higher a body's reflectivity the smaller its diameter for a given brightness.
[3] This minor planet was named after British astronomer John E. Geake (1925–1998), who invented the direct-reading linear refractometer, which was used by the Cassini–Huygens space probe.