Theophilus Painter
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Theophilus Shickel Painter (August 22, 1889–October 5, 1969) was an American zoologist, known for his work in identifying genes, in fruit flies.
In 1921 he first gave a number, 24, for the count of human chromosomes, that gained much notoriety (the correct number being 23). Painter tried to count the tangled mass of unpaired chromosomes he could see in the spermatocytes in slices of testicle, under a microscope, and arrived at the figure of 24. 'I feel confident that this is correct', he said. Others later repeated his experiment in other ways and agreed the number was 24. For 30 years nobody disputed this 'fact'; even photographs showing 23 paired chromosomes were given captions saying 24. In 1955 Joe-Hin Tijo and Albert Levan, using better techniques, plainly saw 23 pairs, and the accepted number was finally revised.