Townes had German, Scottish, English, Welsh, Huguenot French, and Scotch Irish ancestry, Townes was born in Greenville, South Carolina, the son of Henry Keith Townes (1876–1958), an attorney, and Ellen Sumter Townes (; 1881–1980).  His brother, Henry Keith Townes Jr., (January 20, 1913May 2, 1990), was a renowned entomologist who was a world authority on Ichneumon wasps. Charles earned his B.S. in Physics and B.A. in Modern Languages at Furman University, where he graduated in 1935. Townes completed work for the Master of Arts degree in physics at Duke University in 1937, and then began graduate school at the California Institute of Technology, from which he received a Ph.D. degree in 1939. During World War II, he worked on radar bombing systems at Bell Labs.