I'd highly suggest you consider JRuby + Mirah, or IronRuby + F#. F# especially with units is a really nice way to write your math intensive code. See F# vs. C on the Burrows Wheeler Transform.

Mirah has familar JRuby syntax but would be perfect for your scientific code as IIRC function calls are early-bound not late-bound. http://www.mirah.org/