I don't know, I think this might be more of a coincidence than anything else. The ability to excel in maths and sciences doesn't really have a lot to do with the ability to acquire a second language. Your example tends to lead one to believe that strong language acquisition skills among MIT students might be a common trait. I would guess that this really isn't the case, since they are at MIT because of their abilities in a completely non-related field.
Abilities in languages and maths are definitely related. Both are based on learning a system and applying that system. I'm a science PhD who has studied multiple languages and was generally at the top of my class - except for Mandarin - whose pictograms are more like art than anything else.