In
The Aesthetics of Computing (page 53),
David Gelernter credits
Algol 60 with introducing the idea of
recursive structure.
He also writes that it inspired the developers of
Simula 67 to take the next step:
object-oriented programming.
Concerning priority, there may have been a dead heat with LISP to introduce recursion. The classic paper by
John McCarthy also dates to 1960:
McCarthy, J.: "Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and their Computation by Machine,
Part I," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1960, pp. 184-195.
Finally, Algol 60 begat AED.