Tony F. Chan, the affable new dean of physical sciences in the College of Letters & Science, has loved math and science for as long as he can remember.

"Science and math are a lot of fun," Chan said, with his trademark laugh. "With physics or math, it doesn't matter what language you speak or what your background is. ... None of that matters. There is a beauty and an absoluteness to the basic sciences."

And the fun? "The fun comes with the excitement of learning how the world works," he said. "Science has given me the opportunity to work on something I love while impacting society, so I am very grateful."

A Hong Kong native, Chan knew early on that his place would be at the forefront of science. "I was going to be a medical doctor. But one day I saw this article about the famous Richard Feynman," the brilliant Caltech physicist whose entertaining lectures and wit attracted legions of admirers. Captivated by tales of Feynman and another Nobel laureate in physics, Murray Gell-Mann, the aspiring doctor did a sudden turnabout: He was going to Caltech to major in physics.

But after a year of courses there, he decided he could never be another Feynman. "What I found I liked most was the application of mathematics. I was very good at doing these problems."

Eager to do research in computational mathematics and its applications in science and engineering, Chan went to Stanford to complete his Ph.D. in the new field of computer science. Following postdoc work at Caltech, he taught at Yale for seven years before taking a sabbatical, intending to return to New Haven.

Instead, longing to move back to friends and family on the West Coast, he took UCLA's offer of a faculty position in math in 1986. "I decided UCLA was my place," he said.

A former chair of the mathematics department and an energetic innovator who created UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics with a few colleagues, then served as its director, Chan becomes dean, a job he never aspired to, with a clear objective: to boost the division's already high-ranking departments to a solid berth among the top 10 in the nation and to attract more majors into the division.

He is a strong believer in collaboration and the interdisciplinary nature of the sciences and wants to alert physical science majors to the many jobs awaiting them in such fields as medicine, technology and law, in addition to the intellectual richness of the subjects.

As for his new role, Chan acknowledged that being a dean requires a broad perspective, "beyond the discipline I've worked in for more than 25 years." But, he added, "I love UCLA, and I believe in the physical sciences. I couldn't do the job otherwise."