Francis Harry "Frank" Panton, CBE (25 May 1923 – 8 April 2013)[1] was a British military scientist, bomb disposal expert, and amateur archaeologist who played a key role in the development of the Chevaline nuclear weapons system during the Cold War.
He served as the Assistant Chief Nuclear Science Advisor (ACSAN) to the British government, and was also heavily involved in military intelligence work in Berlin and Washington, DC.
[1] In the early 1950s, Panton was recruited by British military intelligence and was posted to West Berlin, where he attempted to uncover Soviet nuclear secrets by questioning East German refugees at Checkpoint Charlie.
[1] He also served as a technical advisor at nuclear disarmament talks in Geneva, before returning to Washington in 1963 as the British defence attaché.
Before his retirement from the Trust in 2000, he oversaw the discovery and preservation of several important artefacts, including a Bronze Age boat which was unearthed in Dover in 1992, and the remnants of an Anglo-Saxon church which were found beneath Canterbury Cathedral in 1994.