Vernor Vinge is a science-fiction writer, winner of five Hugo Awards. He holds a PhD (mathematics) from University of California, San Diego and taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University from 1972 to 2000. In 1982, at a panel for AAAI-82, he proposed that technology would accelerate the evolution of intelligence, leading to a kind of "singularity" beyond which merely human extrapolation was essentially impossible. In the 1980s and 1990s, he elaborated on this theme in both his science fiction and nonfiction writing.