Gordon Hisashi Sato (17 December 1927 – 31 March 2017) was an American cell biologist who first attained prominence for his discovery that polypeptide factors required for the culture of mammalian cells outside the body are also important regulators of differentiated cell functions and of utility in culture of new types of cells for use in research and biotechnology. For this work he was elected in 1984 to the United States National Academy of Sciences. In the mid-1980s he established the Manzanar Project aimed at attacking the planet's most critical problems as poverty, hunger, environmental pollution, and global warming through low tech biotechnological methods in salt water deserts that can be transferred to the indigenous inhabitants.