Vernor Vinge was an American science fiction writer who also taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He won the Hugo Award several times for novels such as A Fire Upon the Deep, set across the galaxy.
In his 1993 paper “The Coming Technological Singularity,” presented at a NASA-related symposium, he argued that within 30 years, intelligence greater than human would be created, bringing a turning point that would end the human era. This paper made the idea of the singularity widely known.
