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.^[1][2]

Little's father was a missionary to Madurai, in India, where Little was born in 1858;^[3] his family returned with him to America in 1859.^[1] He earned an A.B. from the University of Nebraska in 1879, and continued at Nebraska's Institute of Mathematics and Civil Engineering, where he earned an M.A. in 1884.^[1][2] After this, he entered graduate study at Yale University, and completed his Ph.D. in 1885 under the supervision of Hubert Anson Newton, with a dissertation concerning knot theory.^[1][2][4]

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.^[1] In 1899–1900 he went on leave from Stanford, and traveled to Germany to study mathematics with Felix Klein and David Hilbert.^[2][5] 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.^[2][5]

He died on September 7, 1923, of heart failure, in Berkeley, California.^[2]