Abstract
One of the most significant developments in computational atomic and molecular physics in recent years has been the introduction of B-spline basis sets in calculations of atomic and molecular structure and dynamics. B-splines were introduced in applied mathematics more than 50 years ago, but it has been in the 1990s, with the advent of powerful computers, that the number of applications has grown exponentially. In this review we present the main properties of B-splines and discuss why they are useful to solve different problems in atomic and molecular physics. We provide an extensive reference list of theoretical works that have made use of B-spline basis sets up to 2000. Among these, we have focused on those applications that have led to the discovery of new interesting phenomena and pointed out the reasons behind the success of the approach.