Guido van Rossum, a Dutch programmer, is the creator of the Python programming language. He began working on Python in the late 1980s as a successor to the ABC language, with the goal of creating a language that was easy to read and write. The first version was released in 1991. Van Rossum led the language's development for many years as its "Benevolent Dictator For Life" (BDFL), a title he held until he stepped down in 2018. His design philosophy, emphasizing code readability and simplicity, remains a core principle of the language.

A. Brendan Eich is the creator of the JavaScript programming language, not Python.

B. James Gosling is known as the father of the Java programming language.

D. Dennis Ritchie was a computer scientist who created the C programming language and was a key developer of the Unix operating system.

E. Linus Torvalds is the creator and principal developer of the Linux kernel.

1. Python Software Foundation. (n.d.). General Python FAQ. Python 3.12.3 documentation. Retrieved from https://docs.python.org/3/faq/general.html#who-created-python. In the section "Who created Python?", the documentation explicitly states, "Python was created by Guido van Rossum."

2. Severance, C. R. (2016). Python for Everybody: Exploring Data in Python 3. In the Preface, page v, it is mentioned: "The Python programming language was created by Guido van Rossum." This book is used as courseware at the University of Michigan and other institutions.

3. Lutz, M. (2013). Learning Python (5th ed.). O'Reilly Media. In Chapter 1, "A Python Q&A Session," under the section "Why Was Python Created?", the text states, "Python was created in the late 1980s by Guido van Rossum." (Note: While O'Reilly is a commercial publisher, its foundational texts are often cited in academic syllabi and are considered authoritative in the field).