Richard Towneley

Who was Richard Towneley?

Richard Towneley was an English mathematician and astronomer from Towneley near Burnley, Lancashire. He was one of a group of seventeenth century astronomers in the north of England, which included Jeremiah Horrocks, William Crabtree and William Gascoigne, the pioneer astronomers who laid the groundwork for research astronomy in the UK. An investigation carried out with the physician Henry Power, followed by correspondence with Robert Boyle, showed the relationship between the pressure and volume of gas in a closed system and led to the formulation of Boyle's Law, or as Boyle named it, Mr. Towneley's hypothesis. He introduced John Flamsteed to the micrometre and invented the deadbeat escapement used in two clocks in the Greenwich Observatory.