Personal and professional correspondence, manuscripts, research notes including astronomical observations and geological measurements, articles, lectures, personal diaries, family genealogy, and a collection of family photographs including glass plate negatives and a glass plate negative format camera.

Astronomer. Studied at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, California, and at the Universities of Berlin and Munich. Before becoming a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Stanford Unviersiy in 1907, Townley taught at U.C. Berkeley and was Astronomer at the International Latitude Observatory in Ukiah, California. He became Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Geodesy at Stanford in 1932. In addition to practical astronomy, his research interests included asteroids, comets and variable stars, latitude measurements, and seismology.

8 Linear Feet