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.

艾伦对物理世界并不陌生，但在这个问题上，他更倾向于绝对精确的事物和严格地推理。半理论半应用的剑桥荣誉学位，使他开始走向科学的核心。他已经和纯数学成了朋友，并以此来对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，艾伦的朋友很少，特别是在第一年。这段时间，他在心理上还以为自己在舍尔伯尼。国王学院的奖学金获得者，通常会形成一个精英小圈子，但艾伦是个例外。他是一个19岁的腼腆的男孩，受过的教育大多是背诵默写、无聊的诗、正规的信之类，而不是展示自己的想法。艾伦在这个圈子里的第一个朋友是大卫·晨佩侬，他是另外两位数学奖学金获得者之一。他在温彻斯特学院，并获得了奖学金，在社交方面，他比艾伦更有自信。他们俩有同样的笑点，同样不受制度和传统的禁锢，甚至同样说话结巴，晨佩侬比艾伦稍好一点。这是一段授受不亲的、公学式的友谊，但对艾伦重要的是，“晨”并没有因为违背传统而受到打击。艾伦和他谈克里斯朵夫，给他看自己想念克里斯时写的日记。

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:

他们一起参加大学课程，一开始艾伦需要努力追赶，因为晨佩侬已经学得很好了，而艾伦却还是写得乱七八糟。事实上，他的朋友“晨”很早就出版过论文，而艾伦却没有。国王学院的两位数学导师是A.E.英哈姆和菲利浦·霍尔。A.E.英哈姆很严肃，有一种讽刺性的幽默感，在学术上以严谨著称。菲利浦·霍尔是最近才当选的，他的羞涩之下，有着非常随和的气质。他喜欢和艾伦聊天，他觉得艾伦充满想法，说话时有一种特殊的抑扬顿挫。1932年1月，艾伦令人印象深刻地写道：

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.

前几天我令一位导师非常高兴，因为我证明了一个定理。他说在我之前，该定理只被谢宾斯基注用一种非常复杂的方法证明过。我的证明相当简单，胜过谢宾斯基一筹。