You can also add: Lua: Roberto Ierusalimschy * Associate professor at PUC-Rio. Tcl: John Ousterhout * Professor of computer science at Stanford (and professor

You can also add: Lua: Roberto Ierusalimschy * Associate professor at PUC-Rio. Tcl: John Ousterhout * Professor of computer science at Stanford (and professor of computer science at Berkeley when he invented Tcl). Plus, Python's design was based on a teaching language (ABC) that was designed based on actual usability research. And, of course, this does not even count the classics (LISP, Smalltalk, Scheme) whose authors have pretty impressive academic pedigrees and whose designs inspired many of the more recent languages (e.g., the influences of Smalltalk and LISP on Ruby are pretty obvious).