Charles Newton Little

Charles Newton Little (1858–1923) was an American mathematician and civil engineer. He was known for his expertise in knot theory, including the construction of a table of knots with ten or fewer crossings.

Little's father was a missionary to Madurai, in India, where Little was born in 1858; his family returned with him to America in 1859.

He returned to the University of Nebraska as an associate professor of civil engineering, and was promoted to full professor in 1889. In 1893 he joined Stanford University as a professor of pure mathematics, after turning down a chair of mathematics at Nebraska. He moved again in 1901 to the University of Idaho, as a professor of civil engineering, and in 1911 was appointed as dean of engineering there.

He died on September 7, 1923, of heart failure, in Berkeley, California.