The most seminal papers in the history of Python:
LutzPrechelt's paper comparing C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl, all on the same non-trivial task
GregStein's paper at the San Jose conference (1997), on how his company used Python to make a commercial web app then sold it to Microsoft - helped convince me people could make money doing Python
Introduction of Machine Learning Library Scikit-Learn: the paper appeared in Journal of Machine Learning Research 2011