PRAGUE, Czech Republic - He's a hapless genius, a self-taught gynecologist, an explorer, a mathematician, inventor of the "notorious triple hammer." He seems maddeningly real, but he is imagined, flitting like an elusive moth through stories and plays that have made him the people's choice for the greatest Czech of all time.

Meet Jara Cimrman. A gray-bearded man in tweed, or so they say, he has the intellect of Albert Einstein and the haphazard charm of Mr. Magoo. And, if we may linger on his personality a bit more, he's the quintessential Czech underdog, the enigmatic patriot in a small country whose sardonic humor is born of a history of being conquered and oppressed.

But, as Cimrman might suggest, we must not digress before we start, so let us begin. Created by writers Zdenek Sverak and Jiri Sebanek, the Cimrman myth recounts the life and adventures of a bumbling and slightly off-the-mark intellectual. Example: Cimrman invents the lightbulb but doesn't make it to the patent office on time. Or, musing in his journal, he writes: "I'm such a complete atheist that I'm afraid God will punish me."

Discovered "documents" about his life were first mentioned on a radio show in 1966. Since then, Cimrman's exploits and self-deprecating humor have resonated with Czechs. Plays about the character, who is seldom seen and mainly conjured by imaginary academics who extol his feats, unfold in the Jara Cimrman Theater, where fans wait in line for hours to buy tickets. A movie has been made about him, a pub bears his name, and a museum of Cimrman's inventions sits on a hill overlooking Prague.

In a recent television poll, Cimrman was picked as the greatest Czech of all time, beating out the likes of religious reformer Jan Hus, literary icon Franz Kafka, former President Vaclav Havel, Good King Wenceslas and a bunch of other nobles and knights dotting Bohemian history. Ultimately deciding that the national hero should be more substantial than a dreamed-up Renaissance man, the television station gave Cimrman his own category and Emperor Charles IV (a real 14th-century king, with a sword) was selected as the country's most revered historical figure.

"Czechs have a tradition of not taking things too seriously," said novelist Ivan Klima, sitting recently in his sunlit home on the outskirts of Prague. "Why? Maybe it's the philosophy of a nation that was never free. We've been dominated by the Austrians, the Nazis and the Soviets. In 400 years of history, we have been a free society for only 35 years. . . . Cimrman is in this tradition. We've had a lot of famous Czechs in science and the arts, but Cimrman is our response not to"inflate ourselves.

An idiosyncratic and lovable wanderer who never quite achieves greatness, Cimrman embodies the inventive spirit. He is a character of head-scratching logic, a phantom stitched into history's epochal moments like an uninvited, yet intriguing, party guest. Born sometime between 1857 and 1867, he's ubiquitous in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, popping up when Guglielmo Marconi invents radio, giving composer Johann Strauss advice on music, introducing a young Pablo Picasso to Cubism with his painting "Still Life With Dice."

Destiny, however, toys with him. Cimrman missed discovering the North Pole by seven meters. Such failures could turn a man into a pessimist, but Cimrman perseveres amid a swirl of riddles and one-liners spun out in plays and skits: "A warm beer is worse than a cold German woman.""Man is born to his own detriment."

He is not overtly political, but his misadventures and intellectual charm endeared him to thousands of Czechs during the Cold War.

"Cimrman started out as a joke on ideology and science. He played an important role during the communist regime," said Jirina Siklova, a writer and former dissident. "Through him, it was possible to make jokes not just on science but on the ideology of the communists." Cimrman remains a bit of escape for today's Czechs who are insecure that "democracy may not be a paradise from our troubles," she said. "But through him we are still able to laugh." (next page »)