American zoologist and cytologist who first showed that the giant chromosomes linked to the development of salivary glands in fruit flies could be used to identify the position of individual genes more precisely than any other previous methods.

Painter received a Ph.D. degree from Yale University (1913) and was a member of the faculty there (1913–16). In 1916 he joined the faculty of the University of Texas, where, in 1946, he became president. Painter early realized that the unusually large chromosomes in the salivary glands of the fruit fly Drosophila are particularly well suited for studies of genes and chromosomes. In 1931 he published a drawing of a section of a Drosophila chromosome showing more than 150 bands, which, for the first time, allowed determination of the precise loci, or positions, of genes.