In this 1985 book, Arto Salomaa gives an introduction to certain mathematical topics central to theoretical computer science.

Editor's statement; Foreword G. Rozenberg; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: models of computation; 2. Rudiments of language theory; 3. Restricted automata; 4. Turing machines and recursive functions; 5. Famous decision problems; 6. Computational complexity; 7. Cryptography; 8. Trends in automata and language theory; Historical and bibliographical remarks