I read

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The evolution of Lisp
Guy L. Steele, Richard P. Gabriel
History of programming languages---II
January 1996
Pages 233–330
https://doi.org/10.1145/234286.1057818
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Actually I read a longer version that I found somewhere. I suppose that
was the draft from which the published version was derived. I'd hope
that I got a little more details than I would have otherwise.

Very interesting read.

(*) A small language is easy to learn

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Extensive work on Scheme implementations was carried on at Yale and
later at MIT by Jonathan Rees, Norman Adams, and others. This resulted
in the dialect of Scheme known as T; [...] The goal was to be a simple
dialect with an especially efficient implementation [Rees, 1982]:

T centers around a small core language, free of complicated
features, thus easy to learn. [...]
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In Kent Pitman's ``dpANS Common Lisp'', we find

Who says people have to learn it all at once? [...] Imagine what
would have happened if Mathematics were constrained such that
mathematicians could use only those concepts that could be taught in
First Grade.

That was nice. :-)

Thanks to whoever mentioned this paper by Kent Pitman here recently. I
think it was Axel Reichert. Thanks!

(*) Alan Bawden

Hey, Alan! I didn't know who you were. (I like not to know who I'm
talking to.) The document spoke very highly of you. It first mentions
you were in the Commmon Lisp Group and eventually calls you a
backquote-meister. Impressive!

The backquote syntax was particularly powerful when nested. This
occurred primarily within macro-defining macros; because such were
coded primarily by wizards, the ability to write and interpret nested
backquote expressions was soon surrounded by a certain mystique. Alan
Bawden of MIT acquired a particular reputation as backquote-meister in
the early days of the Lisp Machine.

We also learned about synctatic closures. Very cool.