MENDHAM, N.J. -- (AP)  If a surprisingly large number of the nation's crack biologists hail from this vicinity a couple of decades hence, it will mean that Dr. George H. Mangun has had his benign revenge on his neighbors.

Dr. Mangun, a 48-year-old biochemist, is moving west -- and taking his experimental research with him, much to the official relief of several squeamish neighbors -- but he'll be leaving a scientific legacy behind him.

3,000 White Mice

The legacy:  a colony of 3,000 little white mice which the doctor has been passing out by the fistful to any youngster who goes to his barnyard laboratory and asks for them.

"It was the kids' idea, really," grins Dr. Mangun, who fought a losing battle for a year and a half against a zoning ordinance interpretation that, in effect, bans large-scale mouse-breeding from the rural confines of Washington Valley near Morristown.

"At first I thought of driving my trail herd through the center of town on my way West," he says, chuckling.  "But then the neighborhood kids started calling up to ask if they could have a mouse.

Sweet Revenge

"I decided then and there that my revenge for this town would be to make biologists out of all the children so they will amount to more than this generation."

Surprisingly, most of the youngsters told Dr. Mangun they wanted the mice for serious study purposes, rather than pets.  A number went to Rutger students for home studies, mostly in genetics.  And many went to fledgling scientists in younger age brackets.

Drew Complaints

Dr. Mangun's experiments, which he has been conducting independently under a $15,000 a year grant from a pharmaceutical firm, are a bit more complicated than that.  They deal with basic research into the mysteries of enzymes and pain killing agents.

The laboratory and mouse colony, set up two years ago in a remodeled barn, drew complaints almost immediately from a "next door" neighbor who lives about 300 yards away down a dirt road.  The complaint:  Dr. Mangun was conducting a business in a residential zone.  Town fathers agreed.

Now, Dr. Mangun is negotiating to move his experiments -- and his wife, three small children, three dogs, two goats and a cat -- to Arizona State College at Tempe, where he'll teach as well as experiment.