You might feel the Professor is being a bit dishonest here, because he doesn’t openly tell Mopey and the others that his change of heart was only brought about by outside intervention.
But he really doesn’t see it that way. After all, the intervention didn’t really come from ‘outside’ – it was the Professor himself who talked some sense into the Professor. Alright, the Professors in question came from different timelines, but ultimately it’s still comes down to arguing with yourself, the time machine only made it a bit more literal.
As the flashback shows, the Professor didn’t find it particularly hard to convince himself – he knows his own priorities pretty well, and knew where to apply pressure. He knows he’s mostly motivated by the sheer joy of simply getting research done, but the very occasional bit of public acknowledgement of his work is nice, too.
Mirai-Professor has seen many diverging timelines in his travel from here to there…or rather, from then to now (with a slight detour through Lyoko). And while the majority of all possible timelines feature a Professor who is awarded a Nobel…or ten…there are a few where that isn’t the case. And none of those is a happy place. ._. So the Professor isn’t putting himself back on the right (Nobel-)track for selfish reasons, or at least not only – he now knows that any timelime that has him as a Nobel laureate is a more just, better and happier timeline.
(And, yeah, Mopey is uncharacteristically elated today. She’s been under a lot of stress lately, so she’s backslid a bit on her gothic aloofness. Don’t worry, she’ll calm down soon.)
More on Thursday.