Not only math/academia, but nearly everywhere. As python started coming pre-installed on MacOS and was a lot easier than fumbling with shell scripts, a lot of s

Not only math/academia, but nearly everywhere. As python started coming pre-installed on MacOS and was a lot easier than fumbling with shell scripts, a lot of scripts were being written to automate boring stuff. Also, the hidden beast is Django and Flask, which are also being commonly used by both serious and non-serious folks, overall increasing the userbase. Also python is less verbose(compared to Java, C#, Scala, JavaScript pre-ES6 etc.) in terms of syntax, so it is much easier to learn and can do both OOP and Functional, while being easier to adapt(no compiler, easy installation, lots of popular libraries), hence academia picked it up. Also, python has built-in parallel processing features which are less daunting(in terms of concepts and syntax) than other competitors(C++/Java etc). See the popularity of Go, same thing happened with Python.