At first, this was not known at Cambridge, and Alan wrote to his mother on 4 May:
一开始,剑桥这边还不知道大洋彼岸发生了什么。5月4日,艾伦写信给母亲说:
I saw Mr Newman four or five days after I came up. He is very busy with other things just at present and says he will not be able to give his whole attention to my theory for some week or so yet.
后来过了四五天,我遇到纽曼先生,他当时在忙别的,说这几周没时间看我的理论。
However he examined my note for C.R. and approved it after some alterations.
但他看了我对《法国科学学刊》的评论注,做了一些修改并认可了。
I also got it vetted by a French expert, and sent it off.
我又找了一位法国专家帮我检查,然后寄出去了,
I have had no acknowledgement of it, which is rather annoying.
目前还没收到回复,有点烦人。
I don't think the full text will be ready for a fortnight or more yet.It will probably be about fifty pages.
我想在两个星期之内完成全文,大概会有五十页,
It is rather difficult to decide what to put into the paper now and what to leave over till a later occasion.
眼下还很难决定留下哪些内容,删掉哪些。
When Newman did read it in mid-May, he could hardly believe that so simple and direct an idea as the Turing machine would answer the Hilbert problem over which many had been labouring for the five years since Gdel had disposed of the other Hilbert questions.
五月中旬,当纽曼开始读艾伦的论文时,他几乎无法相信,图灵机如此简单地解决了希尔伯特的问题。在哥德尔解决了前两步之后,这个问题已经让大家花了五年时间了。
His first impression was that it must be wrong, for some more sophisticated machine would be able to solve the 'unsolvable problem', and that one would then continue on and on.
纽曼的第一个感觉是,图灵肯定是搞错了,应该存在某种更精密的机器,来解决那个不可解决的问题。
But finally he satisfied himself that no finitely defined machine could possibly do more than was allowed by the Turing construction.
但是纽曼最终确信了,任何有限定义的机器,都不可能做到图灵机做不到的事。