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by z3phyr 1688 days ago
Can you link any source on the python scientific usage in the 90s and early 2000s? I think the dominant language in science at that time was a mishmash of MATLAB, Java, C++, FORTRAN and Perl (In Biology at least, perl was the goto glue language due to its excellent string processing capabilities)
3 comments

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4822400

I can attest to Python usage in physics exploding after this. What Livermore says, you listen to. They were considered the best of best, after all.

An unknown student making an unknown library, no one cares. But when Livermore says, hey guys, Numeric is interesting, you listen.

Things rolled from there.

I'm not sure I could find sources on the web any more easily than you. (Maybe start by looking at references in David Beazley's old talks?) I was in physics at the time, and what happened there was that Python basically enveloped Fortran & C++, letting people use the existing code without getting bogged down in complicated invocations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RSht_aV7AU is a recent Beazley talk about that era.