Obviously no scientist would sit on a discovery of this magnitude. As soon as he discovered the math that lead to this breakthrough, he shared it with the world. There were several research groups started to study the possibilities. Someone went rogue and started destroying the future but luckily an investigative journalist discovered the rogue groups test modifications on the timeline and alerted the public.
A program to monitor changes to the timeline was started and, whenever they discover someone mucking with the timeline, they would go back in time and set up premise we see in this movie.
They'd alter the fool's life to make them complete the research in secret, set up a dummy corp to temporarily destroy the near future, help the fool find love in their life, and let them destroy their own project. This isolates the timeline problems to a tight, closed loop instead of destroying the future.