Armstrong's paper about the history of Erlang is fantastic.

It explains how Erlang was developed through a process of trial and error, initially in Prolog and then inheriting a Prolog-like syntax when it became its own thing. Worth reading, lots of trivia about the thought processes behind his and Virding's back-and-forths at the time; and Armstrong is characteristically modest about how they had to invent their way toward a solution, because none existed at the time.

I believe this is the one: http://cobweb.cs.uga.edu/~maria/classes/4500-Spring-2010/pap...

Edit: It also touches on why Erlang's syntax looks the way it does. They initially for a Prologue syntax, and evolved it from there.