About Dr. Gordon H. Sato

Dr. Gordon Hisashi Sato

Dr. Sato was the son of an "Isei" (Japanese-born immigrant) father and a "Nisei" (2nd generation or American-born Japanese) mother on 17 December 1927 in Los Angeles, California who taught him the generic techniques of gardening, or how to cultivate things under a wide variety of conditions. He graduated from Manzanar High School, Manzanar, CA in 1944. He attended Central College, Pella, Iowa for a year before enlisting in the US Army. Supported by the GI bill, he was trained as an undergraduate in biochemistry at the University of Southern California and obtained a Ph.D. degree at the California Institute of Technology in Biophysics in 1955 under Nobel Prize winner Max Delbruck. After post-doctoral training with Gunther Stent at the University of California-Berkeley and Theodore Puck in Genetics at the University of Colorado Medical School, he was a professor of Biochemistry at Brandeis University, Boston, MA from 1958-1969. Dr. Sato joined the Department of Biology at University of California-San Diego where he was professor from 1970 through 1983. He was director of the W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center, Lake Placid, NY from 1983 to 1992. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Adjunct and Honorary Professor at many universities throughout the world. He is the author or co-author of over 150 publications in cell and molecular biology. Dr. Sato is best known for his contribution to the understanding of the multiple factors required for the culture and husbandry of mammalian cells outside the body. Dr. Sato has been instrumental in founding multiple biotechnology ventures including Collaborative Research, Inc. and Hana Biologics and with his Assistant Director, Dr. W.L. McKeehan, at the W. Alton Jones Cell Science Center co-founded Upstate Biotechnology, Inc.(UBI) while serving as Director of the Institute and developing the Manzanar Project. He has trained a long list of students in Cell and Molecular Biology and more recently in aquaculture and silvaculture. He was named a 2002 recipient of the Rolex Award for Enterprise and The 2005 Blue Planet Award and the is the subject of the The Mangrove Man distributed on DVD internationally as well as programs aired on the topic in Japan. Dr. Sato passed away at age 89 on 31 March 2017.

More about Gordon H. Sato on Wikipedia

Early days of the Eritrean Project during the War of Independence.

First class of students in the field