As minor planet discoveries are confirmed, they are given a permanent number by the IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), and the discoverers can then submit names for them, following the IAU's naming conventions. The list below concerns those minor planets in the specified number-range that have received names, and explains the meanings of those names.
Based on Paul Herget's The Names of the Minor Planets,[6] Schmadel also researched the unclear origin of numerous asteroids, most of which had been named prior to World War II. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: SBDB New namings may only be added to this list below after official publication as the preannouncement of names is condemned.[7] The WGSBN publishes a comprehensive guideline for the naming rules of non-cometary small Solar System bodies.[8]
Didier Queloz (born 1966), Swiss astrophysicist at Geneva University known for the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet around a main-sequence start
Jack M. Dembicky (born 1966) was the telescope operations specialist, and is now the support astronomer at New Mexico's Apache Point Observatory. He was the lead 2MASS telescope operator at the F. L. Whipple Observatory at Mount Hopkins, AZ (1997–2000). He has an M.S. in physics (1996) from Wichita State University.
Paola Celletti (born 1956), Italian architect from the University of Rome "La Sapienza". She has been an amateur astronomer and involved in public outreach.
Gerald Henry Moriarty Schieven (born 1958) is a Canadian astronomer who obtained his PhD at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Gerald was President of the RASC London Centre in 1980. He has worked at JPL, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Herzberg Millimetre Astronomy Group.
Sau Lan Wu (b. 1940s) is a Chinese-American particle physicist. She is renowned for her integral leadership and participation in the discoveries of the charm quark, the [gluon], and the Higgs boson. Wu is the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and an experimentalist at CERN.
Harley “J Harlen” Bretz (1882–1981) was an American geologist. His fieldwork of the Channeled Scablands on the Columbia River Plateau led him to propose that the landscape resulted from cataclysmic flooding. His theory has been vindicated by decades of evidence and the discovery of the ancient glacial Lake Missoula as the flood source.
Chih-Kang Chou (born 1935), a Chinese-born astronomer, who taught and conducted research in astronomy at the National Central University in Taiwan for 30 years.
