The Nature Reviews Genetics Timeline features an interesting story on human chromosome numbers. Theophilus Painter in his 1921 Science paper wrote: “In my own materials the counts range from 45 to 48 apparent chromosomes” which was interpreted for obvious reasons to be 46 or 48 (Painter probably saw a bended chr1 as 2 different ones). Textbooks then reported 48 human chromosomes for 3 decades until the classical paper of Tijo in 1956 paper who confirmed 46 human chromosomes. Gartler believes that Tijos unusal background have made him likely to question authority. Yea, yea.