V. Alexander Nedzel was a research assistant at the University of Chicago Met Lab. After the Manhattan Project, he worked at the Institute for Nuclear Studies and was head of the Aerospace Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
After discovering a minor planet on April 28, 1982, L.G. Taff named the planet in honor of Nedzel, who was a supporter of the Lincoln Laboratory Earth-Approaching Asteroid Search and died just a few years following the discovery on September 6, 1984.