It was discovered on 8 August 1986, by Belgian and Bulgarian astronomers Eric Elst and Violeta Ivanova at the Rozhen Observatory, located in Bulgaria's Smolyan province near the border to Greece.

[1] It was first identified as 1981 UV12 at Crimea-Nauchnij in 1981, extending the body's observation arc by 5 years prior to its official discovery at Rozhen.

[9] A rotational lightcurve of Al-Biruni was obtained from photometric observations made at the U.S. Goodsell Observatory (741), Minnesota, in August 2002.

Regarded as the founder of Indology and the father of geodesy, he made important contributions to anthropology, mathematics and astronomy.

In particular, he is known for developing a method for the summation of series, for solving algebraic equations, and for the triangulation of distances on Earth's surface.