Wes McKinney introduced pandas, a Python data analysis library built on NumPy. Pandas provides data structures and tools for cleaning, manipulating, and working with relational and time-series data. Key features include DataFrame for 2D data, hierarchical indexing, merging and joining data, and grouping and aggregating data. Pandas is used heavily in financial applications and has over 1500 unit tests, ensuring stability and reliability. Future goals include better time series handling and integration with other Python data science packages.