Peter Townsend has been an experimental condensed matter physicist for many years and has worked in areas of colour centres in insulators, optical effects of ion implantation, radiation dosimetry, thermoluminescence, nanoparticles, pulsed laser annealing and optical detection of phase transitions. The more applied aspects of the work have included topics ranging from radiation dosimeters and geological dating, production of car mirrors and sunglasses using nanoparticles, waveguides and waveguide lasers via ion implantation to, most recently, the production of high performance photocathodes for PM tubes.
There have been some 50 postgraduates within the group, giving a total of ~500 collaborators from ~38 countries. The consequent output totals some 475 items of journal papers and books. Spare time activities include violin playing and sword fencing (past national Veterans champion and 13th place in World Veterans).