雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第3章:思考什麼是思考(17)

Alan was no foreigner to an interest in the physical world. But at this point, what he needed most was a grip on rigour, on intellectual toughness, on something that was absolutely right. While the Cambridge Tripos – half 'pure' and half 'applied' – kept him in touch with science, it was to pure mathematics that he turned as to a friend, to stand against the disappointments of the world.

艾倫對物理世界並不陌生，但在這個問題上，他更傾向於絕對精確的事物和嚴格地推理。半理論半應用的劍橋榮譽學位，使他開始走向科學的核心。他已經和純數學成了朋友，並以此來對抗世俗世界中的失意。

Alan did not have many other friends – particularly in this first year, in which he still mentally belonged to Sherborne. The King's scholars mostly formed a self-consciously élite group, but he was one of the exceptions. He was a shy boy of nineteen, who had had an education more to do with learning silly poems by rote, or writing formal letters, than with ideas or self-expression. His first friend, and link with the others of the group, was David Champernowne, one of the other two mathematical scholars. He came from the mathematical sixth form of Winchester College, where he had been a scholar, and was more confident socially then Alan. But the two shared a similar 'sense of humour', being alike unimpressed by institutions or traditions. They also shared a hesitancy in speech, although David Champernowne's was more slight than Alan's. It was and remained a rather detached, public school kind of friendship, but important to Alan was that 'Champ' was not shocked by unconventionality. Alan told him about Christopher, showing him a diary that he had kept of his feelings since the death.

除此之外，艾倫的朋友很少，特別是在第一年。這段時間，他在心理上還以爲自己在舍爾伯尼。國王學院的獎學金獲得者，通常會形成一個精英小圈子，但艾倫是個例外。他是一個19歲的靦腆的男孩，受過的教育大多是背誦默寫、無聊的詩、正規的信之類，而不是展示自己的想法。艾倫在這個圈子裏的第一個朋友是大衛·晨佩儂，他是另外兩位數學獎學金獲得者之一。他在溫徹斯特學院，並獲得了獎學金，在社交方面，他比艾倫更有自信。他們倆有同樣的笑點，同樣不受制度和傳統的禁錮，甚至同樣說話結巴，晨佩儂比艾倫稍好一點。這是一段授受不親的、公學式的友誼，但對艾倫重要的是，“晨”並沒有因爲違背傳統而受到打擊。艾倫和他談克里斯朵夫，給他看自己想念克里斯時寫的日記。

They would go to college tutorials together. To begin with, it was a case of Alan catching up, for David Champernowne had been much better taught, and Alan's work was still poorly expressed and muddled. Indeed, his friend 'Champ' had the distinction of publishing a paper11 while still an undergraduate, which was more than Alan did. The two supervisors of mathematics at King's were A.E. Ingham, serious but with a wry humour, the embodiment of mathematical rigour, and Philip Hall, only recently elected a Fellow, under whose shyness lay a particular friendly disposition. Philip Hall liked taking Alan, and found him full of ideas, talking excitedly in his own strange way, in which his voice went up and down in pitch rather than in stress. By January 1932 Alan was able to write in an impressively off-hand way:

他們一起參加大學課程，一開始艾倫需要努力追趕，因爲晨佩儂已經學得很好了，而艾倫卻還是寫得亂七八糟。事實上，他的朋友“晨”很早就出版過論文，而艾倫卻沒有。國王學院的兩位數學導師是A.E.英哈姆和菲利浦·霍爾。A.E.英哈姆很嚴肅，有一種諷刺性的幽默感，在學術上以嚴謹著稱。菲利浦·霍爾是最近才當選的，他的羞澀之下，有着非常隨和的氣質。他喜歡和艾倫聊天，他覺得艾倫充滿想法，說話時有一種特殊的抑揚頓挫。1932年1月，艾倫令人印象深刻地寫道：

I pleased one of my lecturers rather the other day by producing a theorem, which he found had previously only been proved by one Sierpinski, using a rather difficult method. My proof is quite simple so Sierpinski* is scored off.

前幾天我令一位導師非常高興，因爲我證明了一個定理。他說在我之前，該定理只被謝賓斯基注用一種非常複雜的方法證明過。我的證明相當簡單，勝過謝賓斯基一籌。