Ruby, created in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto, initially gained attention in 1999 and saw significant popularity growth with the introduction of Ruby on Rails in 2005. Ruby on Rails, developed by David Heinemeier Hansson, is a web development framework that allows developers to create complex applications rapidly and is supported by a large open source community. The document discusses the evolution of Ruby and Rails, highlighting the contributions from various developers and the extensive use of plugins that facilitate development.