 The main-belt asteroid was named after physicist and astronomer Karl Schwarzschild (1873–1916), who had died earlier that year.He was director of the observatories in Göttingen and Potsdam, known for his work in photometry, geometrical optics, stellar statistics and theoretical astrophysics, most notably for producing the first exact solutions to Einstein's field equations.At the time, it was custom to give feminized names to minor planets.