Arto Kustaa Salomaa (6 June 1934 – 26 January 2025) was a Finnish mathematician and computer scientist.

His research career, which spanned over 40 years, was focused on formal languages and automata theory.

[1] Salomaa was introduced to the theory of automata and formal languages during seminars at Berkeley given by John Myhill in 1957.

[8] He had two children, Kirsti and Kai,[8] the latter of whom is a professor of Computer Science at Queen's University at Kingston and also works in the field of formal languages and automata theory.

[14] On 13 June 2013, Salomaa was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Western Ontario.