The scientific community is a whole other community than the programming community, so it's possible that they favor Python; but I'm not part of the scientific community.
SciPy and NumPy have however been ported to .NET and are options to be explored. Does this have SIMD optimization? How does this compare to SIMD-optimized .NET types?
https://www.infoq.com/news/2011/07/NumPy-NET
http://pytools.codeplex.com/wikipage...y%20for%20.Net