Named in honor of the American astronomer Sherburne Wesley Burnham (1838–1921). From 1869 he observed as an amateur astronomer and discovered many visual binaries. Later he observed in Chicago (1877), Lick (1888) and Yerkes (1897) Observatories. Burnham is the author of the famous General Catalogue of Double Stars of 13,665 binaries. (H 82; AN 214, 69 (1921)) _ _.