Pakistan's only Nobel laureate helped develop the theoretical framework that led to the apparent discovery of the subatomic "God particle" last week, yet his legacy has been largely scorned in his homeland because of his religious affiliation. 

It's a sign of the growing Islamic extremism in his country.

Adbus Salam, who died in 1996, was once hailed as a national hero for his pioneering work in physics  and work that guided the early stages of Pakistan's nuclear programme. Now his name is even stricken  from school textbooks because he was a member of the Ahmadi sect that has been persecuted by the government and targeted by Taliban militants, who view them as heretics. 

Their plight -- along with that of Pakistan's other religious minorities, such as Shiite Muslims and Hindus has deepened in recent years as hard-line interpretations of Islam have gained ground and militants have stepped up attacks against groups they oppose. The majority of Pakistan's citizens are Sunni Muslims. 

Salam, a child prodigy born in 1926 in what was to become Pakistan after the partition of British- controlled India, won more than a dozen international prizes and honours. In 1979, he was co-winner of the Nobel Prize for his work on the so-called Standard Model of particle physics, which theorizes how fundamental forces govern the overall dynamics of the universe. 

Salam and Steven Weinberg, with whom he shared the Nobel Prize, independently predicted the existence of a subatomic particle now called the Higgs boson, named after a British physicist who theorized that it endowed other particles with mass, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist who  once worked with Salam. It is also known as the "God particle" because its existence is vitally important toward understanding the early evolution of the universe. 

Physicists in Switzerland stoked worldwide excitement Wednesday when they announced they have all but proven the particle's existence. This was done using the world's largest atom smasher at the  European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva. 

"This would be a great vindication of Salam's work and the Standard Model as a whole," said Khurshid Hasanain, chairman of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. 

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Salam wielded significant influence in Pakistan as the chief scientific adviser to the president, helping to set up the country's space agency and institute for nuclear science and technology. Salam also assisted in the early stages of Pakistan's effort to build a nuclear bomb,  which it eventually tested in 1998.