Episode 262: Travis Oliphant: SciPy, NumPy, and Fostering Scientific Python

The Real Python Podcast

Aug 22, 2025 1h 11m intermediate data-science data-structures

What went into developing the open-source Python tools data scientists use every day? This week on the show, we talk with Travis Oliphant about his work on SciPy, NumPy, Numba, and many other contributions to the Python scientific community.

Episode Sponsor:

Travis discusses his initial involvement in the open-source community and how he discovered Python while working in biomedical imaging. He was trying to find ways to manage large sets of numerical data, which led to his initial contributions and collaborations in building scientific libraries.

His appearance on the show coincides with the release of the Python documentary, in which he’s featured. We discuss the myriad organizations Travis founded, including Quansight, OpenTeams, and Anaconda. We dig into his underlying mission to continue fostering the growth of the open-source scientific computing community.

This episode is sponsored by Influxdata.

Course Spotlight: NumPy Techniques and Practical Examples

In this video course, you’ll learn how to use NumPy by exploring several interesting examples. You’ll read data from a file into an array and analyze structured arrays to perform a reconciliation. You’ll also learn how to quickly chart an analysis and turn a custom function into a vectorized function.

Topics:

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:41 – Python documentary
00:07:44 – Getting involved in open source
00:12:04 – Numeric Python
00:15:36 – SciPy and the SciPy community
00:17:35 – Starting to think about entrepreneurship
00:18:16 – NumPy evolving from the work of Numeric
00:22:01 – Sponsor: Influxdata
00:22:53 – Python as controlling code for lower-level libraries
00:23:37 – Numba open-source JIT compiler
00:30:09 – Starting to build in Python before learning it all
00:34:45 – Python as the language AI generates
00:36:31 – Guilds and sharing knowledge
00:40:15 – More NumPy backstory
00:46:36 – Contributing to Python
00:48:24 – Video Course Spotlight
00:49:41 – The investment of companies in Python
00:51:22 – Quansight and businesses in open source
00:53:09 – Open Teams and Quansight details
00:57:14 – NumFOCUS and Anaconda
00:58:51 – FairOSS
01:02:36 – Documenting these efforts
01:05:37 – What are you excited about in the world of Python?
01:07:12 – What do you want to learn next?
01:08:10 – How can people follow your work online?
01:10:03 – Thanks and goodbye

Show Links:

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