Can this model of MacBook Pro satisfy my scientific needs?
It is impossible to determine if the laptop you described would be suitable, because you have not described it. Apple has been releasing 13 inch MacBook Pro laptops since 2008.

Matlab seems to have had performance issues on Mac OS X, I'm not sure if this is still a problem, but you should try to find out, a good place to start is the official minimum requirements of Matlab for Mac OS X: http://www.mathworks.com/support/sysreq/current_release/index.html?sec=mac

Python would probably work fine, however not much can be said about the rest of the software you use, because you did not mention what that software is. First of all, make sure all of your software also runs on Mac OS X or if there are alternatives for Mac OS X that you could use.