Matti Juhani Rissanen (23 June 1937 in Viipuri – 24 January 2018 in Vantaa) was a Finnish professor emeritus and researcher in English linguistics.
[5] In 1995, Rissanen founded, and became the first director of, the English linguistics research unit Varieng at the University of Helsinki,[6] and in 1998 was president of the Societas Linguistica Europaea.
He became an honorary doctor at the University of Uppsala, Sweden (2001); was elected to the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters; and he became an honorary member of the Modern Language Society (2005), the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, and the Japan Association for English Corpus Studies (2006).
[8] In 2012, Rissanen received the Alfred Kordelin Prize, comprising a €30,000 research grant.
[9] In the recollection of his former student and colleague Matti Kilpiö, Rissanen's 'optimism [...] was infectious, his energy unfailing'.