•
Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula was discovered by
Simon Plouffe, who has since expressed regret at having to share credit for his discovery. •
Bell numbers have been studied since the 19th century and even medieval Japan, but are named after Eric Temple Bell who wrote about them in the 1930s. •
Bellman–Ford algorithm for computing the shortest-length path, proposed by Alfonso Shimbel, who presented the algorithm in 1954, but named after Richard Bellman and Lester Ford Jr., who published equivalent forms in 1956 and 1958. •
Benford's law, named after physicist
Frank Benford, who stated it in 1938, although it had been previously stated by
Simon Newcomb in 1881. •
Bertrand's ballot theorem proved using
André's reflection method, which states the probability that the winning candidate in an election stays in the lead throughout the count. It was first published by
W. A. Whitworth in 1878, nine years before
Joseph Louis François Bertrand;
Désiré André's proof did not use reflection, though reflection is now the method commonly taught. • The
Bessemer process was discovered by
William Kelly in 1851.
Henry Bessemer was the first to obtain a patent in 1855. • The
Bethe–Salpeter equation (named after
Hans Bethe and
Edwin Salpeter), which describes the
bound states of a two-body system in
quantum field theoretical. The equation was first published by
Yoichiro Nambu, but without derivation. •
Betteridge's law of headlines, stating that when a headline asks a (yes-no) question, the answer is no. Considered "an old truism among
journalists", it was well known before Betteridge wrote about it in 2009. •
Betz' law, which shows the maximum attainable energy efficiency of a wind turbine, was discovered first by
Frederick W. Lanchester. It was subsequently independently rediscovered by
Albert Betz and also
Nikolai Zhukovsky. • The
Bilinski dodecahedron appears in a 1752 book by
John Lodge Cowley but is named after
Stanko Bilinski, who rediscovered it in 1960. • The
Black–Scholes model postulating a geometric Brownian motion as a model for stock market returns, credited to the 1973 academic papers of
Fischer Black,
Myron Scholes and
Robert C. Merton, was first proposed by
Paul Samuelson in 1965, and refined further in work with
Merton in 1969. •
Blount's disease was described independently by C. Mau (1923) and Harald Nilsonne (1929), both writing in German, before it was described in English by Walter Putnam Blount (1937). •
Bode's law of 1772, stating that the distances of the planets from the sun follow a simple arithmetical rule, was first stated by
Johann Titius in 1766, not
Johann Elert Bode. • The
Bonferroni correction is named after Italian
mathematician Carlo Emilio Bonferroni for its use of
Bonferroni inequalities. However, its development is often credited to
Olive Jean Dunn, who described the procedure's application to
confidence intervals. •
Boyce–Codd normal form, a
normal form used in
database normalization. The definition of what we now know as BCNF appeared in a paper by Ian Heath in 1971. Date writes: Since that definition predated Boyce and Codd's own definition by some three years, it seems to me that BCNF ought by rights to be called
Heath normal form. But it isn't. •
Boyle's law, which stipulates the reciprocal relation between the pressure and the volume of a gas, was first noted by
Richard Towneley and
Henry Power. In France, the law is known as Mariotte's law, after
Edme Mariotte, who published his results later than Boyle, but crucially added that the relation holds only when temperature is kept constant. •
Bradley–Terry model, one of the most popular models for
Pairwise comparison, first described by
Ernst Zermelo in 1929. •
Braess's paradox, that adding one or more roads to a road network can cause overall traffic flow through it to slow down, was first discovered by Arthur Pigou in 1920. •
Brayton Cycle, as quoted from Wikipedia itself: The engine cycle is named after George Brayton (1830–1892), the American engineer who developed it originally for use in piston engines, although it was originally proposed and patented by Englishman John Barber in 1791. •
Brus equation named after
Louis E. Brus. Proposed a few years earlier by
Alexander Efros. •
Burnside's lemma, a counting technique in
group theory, was discovered by
Augustin Louis Cauchy, or possibly others.
William Burnside originally attributed it to
Ferdinand Georg Frobenius. Ironically, Burnside made many original contributions to group theory, and Burnside's Lemma is sometimes jokingly referred to as "the lemma that is not Burnside's". •
Buridan's ass originates from the Persian philosopher
Al-Ghazali. The version popularised by
Jean Buridan also does not include the eponymous donkey. ==C==