Ignoring the heat wave, physicist Bob Dynes, who becomes University of California president in October, has overlooked his summer vacation.

He's going against the more leisurely precedent of past incoming presidents about to oversee the behemoth UC system. Not waiting for September, he's seeking out chancellors and other pivotal figures of the world's largest public university. He is about to direct an overall education budget that's been slashed like others, but may still reach $15 billion.

Equally hyperactive is his acting successor as chancellor at UCSD, Marsha Chandler. While regents consider a permanent replacement for Dynes, echoes suggest that searches already extend far beyond this campus. Both Dynes and his predecessor (as both chancellor and president), Dick Atkinson, came to UCSD with strong ties to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council.

This level of research-immersed leadership may have grown even more vital a prototype for UCSD, where liberal arts departments have long looked hungrily at swelling research budgets in the sciences. That phenomenon is no longer restricted to major research universities.

Final accounting for the past fiscal year reveals that UCSD alone has received an astonishing $627 million in federal research funding. This will likely rank UCSD third this year among all U.S. universities in the level of federal funding.

Such research support at UCSD is the linchpin of the Torrey Pines Mesa miracle. Ringed by Salk, Scripps and a dozen more science-oriented institutions and private concerns that also draw heavy outside support, UCSD is the catalyst that has brought San Diego international fame as a continually emerging scientific research center. The phenomenon is far more sweeping than most San Diegans grasp.

"But for these thousands of really great scientists on this mesa," says Richard Ulevitch, chairman of the top-flight immunology department at Scripps Research Institute, "San Diego could have become a disaster area like Silicon Valley. San Diego is no longer reliant on climate or product alone but on brains."