Not even sure what you're getting at.

It's a common type of tongue-in-cheek comment, one can find in tons of writings. "Blame X who inspired me to study Y, and led me down this path".

There's no actual blame, it's just praise for his professor (and that's immediately understood as such).

There's nothing "really really strange" about it, and there's no "weird emphasis" (it's a mere passing line in a big post). If anything, your pointing it out is weird.