I agree with collyw; Lisp is too much for most scientists, who just care about getting their research done and can't be bother to learn all this weird FP/paren stuff [1]. Supplying an obvious, familiar syntax that looks like math written on paper for, e.g., matrix operations, is critical. This is actually one of the core tensions in Julia development imho: balancing having a sane, well designed language (from a programmer's perspective) vs. having a tool that allows scientists to quickly and easily crank out results.
[1]: Note; I am not insinuating that Lisp is bad, I like it personally. Just relaying the response you will get from most practicing scientists who are not trained as programmers.
[1]: Note; I am not insinuating that Lisp is bad, I like it personally. Just relaying the response you will get from most practicing scientists who are not trained as programmers.