title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Assad entered the professional wrestling business through the help of a corrections officer in his prison who also worked as a wrestler in the independent circuit. After being trained by former professional wrestlers Soulman Alex G and Norman Smiley, Assad made his wrestling debut in 2002. He worked for many different companies on the independent circuit using the name Antonio Banks, including appearances with Full Impact Pro (FIP) and Future of Wrestling (FOW), where he won the latter's Tag Team Championship with Punisher. During his time in FIP, he wrestled Homicide for the World Heavyweight Championship at the Ring of Honor show "Do or Die IV" on February 19, 2005, but did not win the title. He also made sporadic appearances for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), and wrestled on the April 20, 2003, episode of "TNA Xplosion". He appeared again for TNA on the August 6, 2004, episode of "Impact!", with Sal Rinauro as his tag team partner, losing to America's Most Wanted. He also wrestled for Coastal Championship Wrestling (CCW) and Elite Wrestling Entertainment in 2005, competing against wrestlers like Jerry Lynn and D'Lo Brown. In CCW, he won the Heavyweight Championship on August 20, 2005, by defeating Blackhart and Bruno Sassi in a three-way match.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: In 2005, after a number of live events and dark matches, Assad signed a developmental contract with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and was assigned to their developmental territory Deep South Wrestling. He originally wrestled under his "Antonio Banks" ring name, but then developed the Montel Vontavious Porter (MVP) in-ring persona: an arrogant, self-obsessed athlete. He was also on an episode of "SmackDown!" on January 13, 2005, being one of the police officers in the ring with Kurt Angle.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: As MVP, he made his first appearance on WWE television on the August 4, 2006 episode of "SmackDown!", during which announcers described him as a coveted free agent. The initial angle involved MVP appearing backstage and in arena crowds, often flanked by women and/or a bodyguard, and talking to SmackDown! General Manager Theodore Long about the contract his (unseen) agent was supposedly aggressively negotiating. Throughout his segments, commentators described MVP as arrogant, noting that he would stop conversations in the middle to answer his mobile phone or admire his own jewelry while people were speaking to him. Finally, on September 26, 2006, video of a press conference announcing the signing of MVP to "the largest contract in SmackDown! history" was uploaded to WWE.com.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: MVP made his in-ring debut at No Mercy as a heel with a ring entrance featuring an NFL-like inflatable tunnel, before defeating Marty Garner. During the match, commentators Michael Cole and John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL) decried the choice of opponent, since it had been implied that it would be someone "more competent", and joined in with fans mocking his athletic suit styled ring gear, calling him "pathetic" while the fans chanted "Power Ranger". On the following episode of "SmackDown!", MVP made a demand for a tougher opponent to prove his mettle, which was answered by Kane making his SmackDown! debut. The two feuded for the next two months, with MVP narrowly scoring wins over Kane in a Street Fight, a Steel Cage match and tag team matches with Mr. Kennedy against the reunited Brothers of Destruction, before losing to Kane in an Inferno match at Armageddon, from which he suffered storyline first-degree burns. Because of the burns he was "out of action" for a short time, during which color commentator JBL expressed rage with the fans for cheering a match where the only way of achieving victory is to set an opponent on fire.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: When his feud with Kane ended, MVP began a feud with the WWE United States Champion Chris Benoit over Benoit's title. During the buildup for a title match with Benoit, MVP appeared on "SmackDown!" introducing various supposed champions from around the world, defeating them in squash matches. MVP lost to Benoit at WrestleMania 23 and at Backlash, but finally defeated Benoit in a Two out of three falls match at Judgment Day, with MVP taking the United States Championship, his first WWE title, in two straight falls. MVP credits his time working with Benoit for improving his in-ring skill. In his first pay-per-view championship defense at , MVP defeated Ric Flair to retain the title.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: His first major feud as the champion was against Matt Hardy, whom he started claiming to be better than at everything, after defeating him at The Great American Bash. When MVP was legitimately diagnosed with the heart condition Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome, it was written into the storyline, with MVP blaming the condition for his losing an arm wrestling match against Hardy. When MVP was given an interview segment during "SmackDown!", the "VIP Lounge", it was used to bow out of a scheduled boxing match at "Saturday Night's Main Event XXXV"—with Evander Holyfield replacing him, and eventually punching out MVP during the bout. On the August 24 episode of "SmackDown!", MVP bragged to General Manager Theodore Long that he was so good, he could win the WWE Tag Team Championship with anybody, prompting Long to grant him a championship match alongside the next person who entered the room, who turned out to be Matt Hardy. The following week, MVP and Hardy won the WWE Tag Team Championship from Deuce 'n Domino, making MVP a double champion. MVP and Hardy's contentious relationship had them competing with each other in various ways while MVP proclaimed himself "Captain" of the team. In the months coming, MVP started getting along better with Hardy, including helping him defeat Finlay on the October 19 episode of "SmackDown!".


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Their reign together came to an end on the November 16 episode of "SmackDown!" after Hardy demanded a shot at the United States Championship, but MVP declined, and announced they had a WWE Tag Team Championship defense against John Morrison and The Miz instead. They lost the match and the titles, and immediately afterwards, MVP invoked the rematch clause, but they lost that match as well. MVP then attacked Hardy, targeting his knee, which in storyline had been injured during the matches, and put him "out of action". Hardy suffered a legitimate ruptured appendix while he was off television, putting their feud on hold. While Hardy recovered, MVP engaged in short feuds with Rey Mysterio (losing a title match by countout at Armageddon) and Ric Flair (losing a career threatening match at the Royal Rumble). At No Way Out, he competed in the SmackDown Elimination Chamber match for a World Heavyweight Championship opportunity at WrestleMania XXIV, but was eliminated by Finlay after The Undertaker chokeslammed him off the top of a chamber pod. He would instead participate in the Money in the Bank ladder match at WrestleMania, and during the match, Hardy made an unannounced return and knocked MVP from the ladder with his signature Twist of Fate maneuver, costing him the match and reigniting their feud. At Backlash on April 27, MVP lost the United States Championship to Hardy, ending his record reign at 343 days, which was at the time the longest reign of the WWE era, and the third longest in the entire history of the championship (the record has since broken by Dean Ambrose in 2014). He then subsequently failed to regain the championship in a rematch on the May 2 episode of "SmackDown".


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Beginning on the August 29 episode of "SmackDown", MVP developed a losing streak that lasted over five months, losing in both singles and tag team matches. At Unforgiven, he challenged for the WWE Championship in the Championship Scramble match, but was unsuccessful, continuing his losing streak. The losing streak meant that, in storyline, MVP did not receive "his contract incentive bonus", and also was no longer allowed his usual entrance with the NFL-like inflatable tunnel. During this losing streak he had a short feud with The Great Khali. On the January 16, 2009 episode of "SmackDown", MVP finally broke the losing streak by defeating Big Show in a Last Man Standing match with help from Triple H, as he was fighting to ensure that Triple H would be allowed to compete in the Royal Rumble match, in the process turning him face for the first time in his career. On the 500th episode of "SmackDown" on March 20, MVP won the United States Championship for the second time by defeating Shelton Benjamin. At WrestleMania 25, MVP competed in the Money in the Bank ladder match for the second year in a row, but failed to win.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On the April 13 episode of "Raw", MVP was drafted as the first overall pick to the Raw brand as a part of the 2009 WWE draft. As a result of being the reigning WWE United States Champion, he transferred the title to Raw for the first time in history. He lost the title to Kofi Kingston on the June 1 episode of "Raw", before beginning a feud with Jack Swagger, which culminated in a match at SummerSlam, which MVP won. He then formed a tag team with Mark Henry, and they challenged Jeri-Show (Chris Jericho and The Big Show) for the Unified WWE Tag Team Championship at the Breaking Point pay-per-view, but they failed to win the championship. At Survivor Series, MVP and Henry made up part of Team Kofi, competing against Team Orton in a 5-on-5 tag team elimination match. Although both MVP and Henry were eliminated, Team Kofi would go onto to win the match.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: After beginning a feud with The Miz, MVP faced him for the WWE United States Championship at Royal Rumble on January 31, 2010, but was unable to win. After this preliminary title retention, both also participated in the Rumble itself. MVP entered 14th and was surprise-attacked by Miz (who was not yet an official entrant) who hit him with the United States title belt. MVP later recovered and entered the match (having not been eliminated) to eliminate both himself and Miz. MVP challenged The Miz for the title a second time at the February 21 Elimination Chamber pay-per-view but was once again unable to win after interference from Big Show. He also competed in the Money in the Bank ladder match at WrestleMania XXVI, but was unable to win.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: As part of the 2010 WWE supplemental draft, MVP was drafted back to the SmackDown brand. He made his "SmackDown" return on the April 30 episode, interrupting CM Punk's promo, and later teaming up with Rey Mysterio to defeat Punk and Luke Gallows. On June 1, MVP was announced as the mentor of Percy Watson for the second season of "WWE NXT"; Watson was eliminated from the competition on August 17, finishing fifth overall. On the November 5 episode of "SmackDown", MVP fought in a triple threat match for the number one contendership of Dolph Ziggler's Intercontinental Championship against Cody Rhodes and Drew McIntyre. The match was won by MVP, and the championship match was set for the following week's "SmackDown", but MVP was unsuccessful in winning the title. MVP was announced as part of Team Mysterio, teaming with Rey Mysterio, The Big Show, Chris Masters and Kofi Kingston to take on Team Del Rio (Alberto Del Rio, Tyler Reks, Jack Swagger, Drew McIntyre and Cody Rhodes) at Survivor Series. At Survivor Series, MVP was the first man eliminated in the match by McIntyre, who was aided by Del Rio holding MVP's foot down so he could not kick out. MVP's team was able to win the match with Rey Mysterio and Big Show being sole survivors. MVP's last match with the WWE aired on the December 3 episode of "SmackDown", teaming with Kaval in a losing effort against Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler; afterward, he and Kaval were attacked by Kane. MVP was released from his WWE contract earlier on December 2.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: In 2011, Assad signed a one-year contract with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, pursuing his noted passion for puroresu. TMZ reported that Assad's prior convictions had made it difficult for him to acquire a visa but that he would be debuting in February. As WWE owned the rights to the name Montel Vontavious Porter, but not MVP, Assad was able to continue working under the abbreviated ring name. In storyline MVP was brought in to the promotion by Nosawa Rongai, who wanted him to join the villainous Kojima-gun, led by Satoshi Kojima. In his debut match for the promotion on February 20 at The New Beginning, MVP teamed with fellow Kojima-gun member Taichi to defeat Togi Makabe and Tomoaki Honma in a tag team match by making Honma submit to his Take it to the Bank crucifix neck crank. On March 6, MVP entered the 2011 New Japan Cup, used to determine the new number one contender to the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, defeating Karl Anderson in his first round match. On March 19, MVP suffered his first loss in New Japan, when he was defeated by Togi Makabe in the second round of the New Japan Cup. The following day, MVP achieved a major victory when he tapped IWGP Heavyweight Champion Hiroshi Tanahashi out with the TTB in a tag team match, where he teamed with Satoshi Kojima and Tanahashi with Hirooki Goto. On May 3, the returning Minoru Suzuki took over as the new leader of Kojima-gun, after its members Taichi and Taka Michinoku had turned on Satoshi Kojima.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: In May 2011, MVP took part in the Invasion Tour 2011, New Japan's first tour of the United States. On May 13 in Rahway, New Jersey, he entered the tournament to determine the first ever IWGP Intercontinental Champion, defeating Kazuchika Okada in his first round match. The following day in New York City, MVP defeated Tetsuya Naito to advance to the finals of the tournament. On the third and final day of the tour in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, MVP defeated Toru Yano in the finals to become the first IWGP Intercontinental Champion. Earlier in the event, MVP showed his allegiance to Satoshi Kojima by saving him from the debuting Lance Archer, thus breaking away from the newly renamed Suzuki-gun. On June 18 at Dominion 6.18, MVP made his first successful defense of the IWGP Intercontinental Championship by defeating Toru Yano. After the match, Yano attacked him and cut his hair. The two would face each other in a third title match on July 18, where MVP was once again victorious. After the match MVP was attacked and challenged by Yano's Chaos stablemate Masato Tanaka. In August, MVP took part in the 2011 G1 Climax, where he managed to win six out of his nine matches, but a loss to Karl Anderson on the final day of the tournament caused him to narrowly miss advancing to the finals. On October 10 at Destruction '11, MVP lost the IWGP Intercontinental Championship to Masato Tanaka, ending his reign at 148 days. MVP received a rematch for the title on December 4, but was again defeated by Tanaka, following interference from his stablemate Yujiro Takahashi.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On January 4, 2012, at Wrestle Kingdom VI in Tokyo Dome, MVP teamed with Shelton Benjamin, making a special one-time appearance, to defeat Tanaka and Takahashi in a tag team match. MVP reunited with Benjamin on June 16 at Dominion 6.16, where they defeated Karl Anderson and Tama Tonga in a tag team match. In August, MVP took part in his second G1 Climax tournament, where he won four out of his eight matches and failed to advance to the finals. In November, MVP took part in the 2012 World Tag League, where he teamed with Shelton Benjamin under the tag team name "Black Dynamite". MVP and Benjamin finished their tournament on December 1 with a record of three wins, one over the reigning IWGP Tag Team Champions K.E.S. (Davey Boy Smith Jr. and Lance Archer), and three losses, failing to advance from their block.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On January 4, 2013, at Wrestle Kingdom 7 in Tokyo Dome, MVP teamed with Akebono, Manabu Nakanishi and Strong Man in an eight-man tag team match, where they defeated Bob Sapp, Takashi Iizuka, Toru Yano and Yujiro Takahashi. On February 26, Assad announced that he had parted ways with New Japan and would be next focusing on a television project with Lionsgate Television. He later explained his reasons behind leaving the promotion, saying that he wanted to stay closer to his home in addition to just "recharging the batteries".


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: At the January 30, 2014, tapings of "Impact Wrestling", Assad returned to TNA using the MVP name, where he was pointed as the storyline "investor" of TNA. As an authority figure, he signed The Wolves and counteracting TNA President Dixie Carter's agenda. Both feuded over the control of TNA until Lockdown, where two teams, representing MVP and Carter, face each other. MVP's team defeated Dixie's team with an assist from special referee Bully Ray, earning MVP total control of wrestling operations.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: However, MVP turned heel when, on the May 8 episode of "Impact Wrestling", he attacked TNA World Heavyweight Champion Eric Young and announced himself as the number one contender to the title at Slammiversary XII. However, MVP suffered a legit torn meniscus and was removed from the match. According to PWInsider, the original plans were to crown MVP as champion. After that, MVP and Kenny King helped Lashley win the TNA World Heavyweight Championship from Eric Young, but MVP was substituted by Kurt Angle as the on-screen authority figure. From there, MVP acted as Lashley and King's manager (and occasional partner after his knee's condition improved), while feuding with Angle in promos. He defeated Kazma Sakamoto at Bound for Glory and, on the November 5 episode of "Impact Wrestling", MVP lost to Bobby Roode in a TNA World Heavyweight Championship match.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: In January 2015, MVP formed a new group, the Beat Down Clan with King, Samoa Joe, Low Ki, and Eric Young, helping Lashley to regain the championship from Roode. MVP attempted to present Lashley as the centerpiece of the Clan as well as a "founding member" (officially establishing the MVP-Lashley-King trio as the foundation of the BDC as a faction). However, Lashley turned on them and the Beat Down Clan attacked him. At Impact Wrestling: Lockdown (2015), Team Angle (Kurt Angle, Austin Aries, Gunner, and Lashley) defeated The BDC (MVP, Samoa Joe, Low Ki, and Kenny King) in a Lethal Lockdown match. On February 27 broadcast of "Impact Wrestling", MVP faced Lashley for the title, but was defeated. In April, The Beat Down Clan started a feud against the newly formed The Rising (Drew Galloway, Eli Drake and Micah), having several matches between the stables until the June 24, 2015 (aired July 1) episode of "Impact Wrestling", where The Beat Down Clan defeated The Rising in a 4-on-3 Handicap match, forcing The Rising to dissolve. On July 17, 2015, MVP officially left TNA. He was reportedly released in the fallout of a contract dispute between TNA and Lucha Underground. MVP had pushed for TNA to sign Hernandez, even though he was at the time still under contract to Lucha Underground. When Lucha Underground contacted TNA, they released Hernandez and were forced to re-edit all segments he had been involved in at the past tapings.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On September 13, 2019, he made an appearance for TNA, now known as Impact Wrestling at their Operation Override Twitch special. In the match, he challenged for WCR's World Class Championship against the champion Chavo Guerrero Jr. Due to the disqualification finish, the two had a rematch at the following night's Victory Road Impact Plus Monthly Specials.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: MVP has made frequent appearances for Tommy Dreamer's House of Hardcore (HOH) promotion. He wrestled at the second and third events when the promotion was starting up in 2013. After his stint in TNA, MVP defeated Moose at House of Hardcore XVI in August 2016 in his return to the promotion. He went on to appear at nine straight shows for the promotion in 2017, wrestling the likes of Jack Swagger, Tommy Dreamer, Billy Gunn and Matt Cross among others. At December 1, 2018, he made his most recent appearance for the promotion, defeating Big Cass at HOH 51.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: He announced on March 31, 2016, that he would be joining Lucha Underground. However, days later, on April 8, he announced his release from the company due to inadvertently violating terms of his contract by interviewing members of the roster for his podcast. On October 10, 2016, MVP defeated Jody Kristofferson for the All Pro Wrestling (APW) Universal Heavyweight Championship. MVP fought Rob Van Dam for the PCW Ultra Heavyweight Championship on March 24, 2017, in a losing effort. The following day, MVP lost the APW Universal Heavyweight Championship to Luster the Legend. His June 22, 2018, return to APW resulted in a loss to Penta El 0M.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: In early 2018 MVP wrestled two matches for Booker T's promotion Reality of Wrestling. On February 25, 2018, he won a battle royal for the Big League Wrestling World Heavyweight Championship, a title he still holds. In March 2018 he wrestled in Istanbul, Turkey for Turkish Power Wrestling in the main event. He debuted for AAW Wrestling on August 4, 2018, in a match where he beat Eddie Kingston.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: During early 2019 he wrestled most frequently for World Class Revolution (WCR), a promotion based out of Oklahoma. Also during 2019 he wrestled for Oakland's Hoodslam Wrestling and Alberto El Patron's new Mexican promotion Nación Lucha Libre.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Due to his podcast on Court Bauer's MLW Radio Network, MVP was chosen as one of the wrestlers for the newly relaunched Major League Wrestling (MLW). He appeared at their first show since 2004, One Shot beating Sami Callihan in a no-disqualification match October 5, 2017. He also joined the company as an agent, producing talent promos and matches. In February 2018, MVP participated in the tournament to crown a new MLW World Heavyweight Champion, the first one since the promotion's revival. He was beaten in the first round by Tom Lawlor. Two months later he made his debut on their new weekly program "MLW Fusion" in a match against Callihan, that MVP lost. MVP continued his feud with Callihan by defeating one of Callihan's partners Leon Scott by DQ on the June 8 episode of "MLW Fusion". On July 1, 2018, MVP revealed he had parted ways with MLW and MLW Radio. His final match for the promotion aired on July 6, 2018. It was a Boiler Room Brawl that was won by Sami Callihan ending their feud.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On January 25, 2019, MVP made a return to Ring of Honor (ROH) at their Road To G1 Supercard show in Houston, Texas. This was his first appearance for the company since one match in 2005, where he wrestled as Antonio Banks. At the show he debuted as a surprise partner of Kenny King, reforming the Beat Down Clan. They would go on to defeat the team of Willie Mack and Colt Cabana advancing them in the Tag Wars tournament. The winners of Tag Wars were set to receive a ROH World Tag Team Championship title shot at ROH's 17th-anniversary pay-per-view and a spot in the Crockett Cup tournament. However, MVP and King lost in the semi-finals of the tournament to Brody King and PCO.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On January 22, 2018, MVP made a special appearance on the 25th-anniversary episode of "Raw" as a guest WWE legend, in a poker segment also involving The APA (Bradshaw and Ron Simmons), and Ted DiBiase. This marked his first WWE appearance of any kind in over eight years at that point.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: When Paul Heyman worked as executive director of the Raw brand, Hassan called him asking for a spot on the Royal Rumble match, since it was going to be celebrated on Houston. Heyman agreed if he had also one match on "Raw" the next day. At the end, WWE and Hassan made an agreement to work as a wrestler, manager, producer and commentator. On January 26, 2020, at the Royal Rumble pay-per-view, MVP would return again at entrant No. 12 as a surprise entrant in the Royal Rumble match, where he was quickly eliminated by Brock Lesnar; this marked MVP's first time in a WWE ring in 10 years. The next night on "Raw", MVP had a match with Rey Mysterio, which he lost. On the February 10 episode of "Raw", MVP brought back "The VIP Lounge," with his guest being 2020 Royal Rumble winner Drew McIntyre. During the segment, MVP turned heel for the first time since 2009, insulting the fans, and trying to advise McIntyre to be managed by him. However, McIntyre disregarded the advice and subsequently attacked MVP. The following week, MVP announced that he was hired by WWE as a backstage producer, while still being an on-screen performer. On the April 20 episode of "Raw", MVP faced Apollo Crews to qualify for the Money in the Bank ladder match, but was defeated.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: At Money in the Bank on May 10, MVP was scheduled to face R-Truth, but was replaced by Bobby Lashley, who quickly defeated Truth. The following night on "Raw", MVP aligned himself with Lashley. At Backlash, MVP managed Lashley as he challenged Drew McIntyre for the WWE Championship, but he was unsuccessful in capturing the title due to an altercation between MVP and Lashley's storyline wife, Lana, that distracted Lashley and allowed McIntyre to retain his championship. The following night on Raw, Lashley had a rematch against McIntyre for the WWE Championship in a tag team match that also involved MVP and R-Truth, but he lost again when the latter pinned MVP. On the July 20 episode of "Raw", Shelton Benjamin joined his stable, now known as The Hurt Business.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: MVP then started a feud with the United States Champion Apollo Crews, after MVP would offer him his services but Crews turned him down. During the storyline, MVP proclaimed himself the real United States Champion when he unveiled a new belt design. At The Horror Show at Extreme Rules, Crews did not appear for their scheduled match, so MVP declared himself as the champion. However, MVP faced Crews two times, one at "Raw" and the other at SummerSlam, failing both times. At Payback, Lashley defeated Crews to win the United States Championship. On the September 7 episode of Raw, Cedric Alexander joined The Hurt Business when he betrayed Crews and Ricochet during a six-man tag team match, attacking them and helping The Hurt Business win the match. At , he was present when Alexander and Benjamin won the Raw Tag Team Championship. In early 2021, MVP suffered a leg injury and began using a crutch to move around, taken him out of in-ring action. He was present when Bobby Lashley won the WWE Championship on the March 1 episode of "Raw".


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On the March 29 episode of "Raw", Lashley attacked Alexander and Benjamin due to them losing the Raw Tag Team Championships and losing to Drew McIntyre in a 2-on-1 handicap match, thus kicking the tag team out of the faction in the process. Lashley would proclaim that The Hurt Business was over. MVP later stated on Twitter that The Hurt Business is still in action, comprising now of just him and Lashley, and that it was open for new members.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On the July 5 episode of "Raw", MVP wrestled for the first time since his injury earlier in the year, in a tag match with Bobby Lashley against Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, also known as The New Day. The team of MVP and Lashley lost the match. On the August 30 episode of "Raw," MVP and Lashley would challenge RK-Bro for the Raw Tag Team Championships, but were unsuccessful in winning the titles. On the September 13 episode of Raw, MVP suffered a broken rib after receiving an RKO from Randy Orton, which put him out of action indefinitely. He returned on the November 8 episode of "Raw", accompanying Lashley to the ring for his match with Dominik Mysterio.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: On the April 4, 2022 episode of "Raw", MVP turned on Lashley and aligned himself with Omos. MVP helped Omos defeat Lashley at WrestleMania Backlash. This led to a 2-on-1 handicap match at Hell in a Cell, where MVP and Omos lost to Lashley, ending their feud.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: In August 2007, Assad was diagnosed with Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome, a rare condition that causes the heart to beat faster than normal. The condition was discovered during his tenure with WWE, when he had undergone a routine check-up in accordance with WWE's Talent Wellness Policy, which otherwise would have gone undetected until it was too late.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Assad was friends with and worked bouncing clubs with the infamous street fighter Kimbo Slice in Miami prior to making it as a wrestler. They remained friends well into both of their careers and until Kimbo's death.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Assad has acquired numerous tattoos through his life, including a portrait of Malcolm X on the upper left portion of his chest, the sarcophagus of King Tut and the pyramids on his left upper biceps, the words "Monte Cristo" with the phrase "the best revenge is living well" in script on his right forearm (both references to the book "The Count of Monte Cristo"), the Eye of Horus on the back of his left arm, and a star on his right shoulder. He also has a number of homemade gang-related tattoos that he had done when he was a teenager.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Assad has stated that he was a video game fan growing up, and that the finishing maneuver he used on the independent circuit, the "Malicious Intent", was inspired by a similar move performed by Eddy Gordo from the "Tekken" series. He has been a fan of Manchester United FC since he was 13, naming Eric Cantona as his favorite player. Despite his earlier conversion to Islam, he has since described himself as an atheist and "infidel".


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Assad practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu, in which he gained the rank of purple belt after winning the gold medal at the Houston Open in the Masters 3 Ultra Heavyweight Division. He also won gold in the Open Division at the Houston Open, and silver at the IBJJF Masters World Championship in the Masters 4/Male/Purple/Ultra-Heavy Category. In December 2020, he won a gold medal at the IBJJF Masters World Championship in the Masters 4/Male/Purple/Ultra-Heavy Category, and was promoted to brown belt at the medal presentation.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: Assad made a cameo appearance in the film "MacGruber", alongside fellow WWE Superstars Chris Jericho, The Great Khali, Big Show, Kane, and Mark Henry.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: MVP released his first hip hop song titled "Holla to da World" featuring Dwayne Swayze in June 2011. A music video for the song, featuring cameos from Carlito and Hernandez, was released the following October. The song was released as a single through iTunes on April 5, 2012. On March 18, 2013, he released his second song entitled "Tokyo". On January 30, 2014, MVP released his third single, titled "Return of the Ronin". The song also became MVP's entrance theme in TNA.


title: Montel Vontavious Porter

text: MVP has been featured as a playable character in the video games "WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008", "WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009", "WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010", "WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2011", and WWE 2K22, his first WWE licensed video game in 11 years.


title: UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists

text: UNESCO established its Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage with the aim of ensuring better protection of important intangible cultural heritages worldwide and the awareness of their significance. This list is published by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the members of which are elected by State Parties meeting in a General Assembly. Through a compendium of the different oral and intangible treasures of humankind worldwide, the programme aims to draw attention to the importance of safeguarding intangible heritage, which UNESCO has identified as an essential component and as a repository of cultural diversity and of creative expression.


text: The list was established in 2008 when the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage took effect.


text: In 2013, four elements were inscribed on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, which helps States Parties mobilize international cooperation and assistance to ensure the transmission of this heritage with the participation of the concerned communities. The Urgent Safeguarding List now numbers 35 elements. The Intergovernmental Committee also inscribed 25 elements on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which serves to raise awareness of intangible heritage and provide recognition to communities' traditions and know-how that reflect their cultural diversity. The list does not attribute or recognize any standard of excellence or exclusivity. Both lists combined totaled 584 elements, corresponding to 131 countries .


text: Elements inscribed in the lists are deemed significant manifestations of humanity's intangible heritage, the highest honor for intangible heritage on a global level.


text: The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity contains intangible cultural heritage elements that "help demonstrate the diversity of cultural heritage and raise awareness about its importance".


text: The List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding contains intangible cultural heritage elements "that concerned communities and States Parties consider require urgent measures to keep them alive".


text: The Register for Good Safeguarding Practices allows States Parties, communities and other stakeholders to "share successful safeguarding experiences and examples of how they surmounted challenges faced in the transmission of their living heritage, its practice and knowledge to the future generation."


text: The Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage were established in 2008, when the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage took effect. Prior to this, a project known as the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity has already been active in recognizing the value of intangibles such as tradition, custom, and cultural spaces and the local actors who sustain these forms of cultural expressions through a Proclamation. Identification of the Masterpieces also entails the commitment of states to promote and safeguard these treasures, while UNESCO finances plans for their conservation. Started in 2001 and held biennially until 2005, a total of three Proclamations occurred, encompassing 90 forms of intangible heritage around the world.


text: The 90 previously proclaimed Masterpieces have been incorporated into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as its first entries, to be known as "elements". Subsequent elements will be added following the assessment of nominations submitted by national governments acceding to the UNESCO Convention, termed as member states, who are each allowed to submit a single candidature file, in addition to multi-national candidatures. A panel of experts in intangible heritage and an appointed body, known as the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, then examine each of the nominations before officially inscribing the candidates as elements on the List.


text: B. A total of three Proclamations of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity were made in 2001, 2003, and 2005. The proclamation was superseded in 2008 when the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity was established.


text: C. The 90 elements that were previously proclaimed as Masterpieces have been inscribed onto the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as per the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.


text: D. Grouping of member states by region is based on the official List as published. Abbreviations were used for convenience:


text: E. The Transcaucasian States of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and Russian Federation are included in the Europe and North America Region.


title: Bijection

text: In mathematics, a bijection, also known as a bijective function, one-to-one correspondence, or invertible function, is a function between the elements of two sets, where each element of one set is paired with exactly one element of the other set, and each element of the other set is paired with exactly one element of the first set. There are no unpaired elements. In mathematical terms, a bijective function is a one-to-one (injective) and onto (surjective) mapping of a set "X" to a set "Y". The term "one-to-one correspondence" must not be confused with "one-to-one function" (an injective function; see figures).


title: Bijection

text: A bijection from the set "X" to the set "Y" has an inverse function from "Y" to "X". If "X" and "Y" are finite sets, then the existence of a bijection means they have the same number of elements. For infinite sets, the picture is more complicated, leading to the concept of cardinal number—a way to distinguish the various sizes of infinite sets.


title: Bijection

text: A bijective function from a set to itself is also called a "permutation", and the set of all permutations of a set forms the symmetric group.


title: Bijection

text: Bijective functions are essential to many areas of mathematics including the definitions of isomorphism, homeomorphism, diffeomorphism, permutation group, and projective map.


title: Bijection

text: For a pairing between "X" and "Y" (where "Y" need not be different from "X") to be a bijection, four properties must hold:


title: Bijection

text: Satisfying properties (1) and (2) means that a pairing is a function with domain "X". It is more common to see properties (1) and (2) written as a single statement: Every element of "X" is paired with exactly one element of "Y". Functions which satisfy property (3) are said to be "onto "Y" " and are called surjections (or "surjective functions"). Functions which satisfy property (4) are said to be "one-to-one functions" and are called injections (or "injective functions"). With this terminology, a bijection is a function which is both a surjection and an injection, or using other words, a bijection is a function which is both "one-to-one" and "onto".


title: Bijection

text: Bijections are sometimes denoted by a two-headed rightwards arrow with tail (), as in "f" : "X" ⤖ "Y". This symbol is a combination of the two-headed rightwards arrow (), sometimes used to denote surjections, and the rightwards arrow with a barbed tail (), sometimes used to denote injections.


title: Bijection

text: Consider the batting line-up of a baseball or cricket team (or any list of all the players of any sports team where every player holds a specific spot in a line-up). The set "X" will be the players on the team (of size nine in the case of baseball) and the set "Y" will be the positions in the batting order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) The "pairing" is given by which player is in what position in this order. Property (1) is satisfied since each player is somewhere in the list. Property (2) is satisfied since no player bats in two (or more) positions in the order. Property (3) says that for each position in the order, there is some player batting in that position and property (4) states that two or more players are never batting in the same position in the list.


title: Bijection

text: In a classroom there are a certain number of seats. A bunch of students enter the room and the instructor asks them to be seated. After a quick look around the room, the instructor declares that there is a bijection between the set of students and the set of seats, where each student is paired with the seat they are sitting in. What the instructor observed in order to reach this conclusion was that:


title: Bijection

text: The instructor was able to conclude that there were just as many seats as there were students, without having to count either set.


title: Bijection

text: A bijection "f" with domain "X" (indicated by "f": "X → Y" in functional notation) also defines a converse relation starting in "Y" and going to "X" (by turning the arrows around). The process of "turning the arrows around" for an arbitrary function does not, "in general", yield a function, but properties (3) and (4) of a bijection say that this inverse relation is a function with domain "Y". Moreover, properties (1) and (2) then say that this inverse "function" is a surjection and an injection, that is, the inverse function exists and is also a bijection. Functions that have inverse functions are said to be invertible. A function is invertible if and only if it is a bijection.


title: Bijection

text: Stated in concise mathematical notation, a function "f": "X → Y" is bijective if and only if it satisfies the condition


title: Bijection

text: Continuing with the baseball batting line-up example, the function that is being defined takes as input the name of one of the players and outputs the position of that player in the batting order. Since this function is a bijection, it has an inverse function which takes as input a position in the batting order and outputs the player who will be batting in that position.


title: Bijection

text: The composition formula_3 of two bijections "f": "X → Y" and "g": "Y → Z" is a bijection, whose inverse is given by formula_3 is formula_5.


title: Bijection

text: Conversely, if the composition formula_6 of two functions is bijective, it only follows that "f" is injective and "g" is surjective.


title: Bijection

text: If "X" and "Y" are finite sets, then there exists a bijection between the two sets "X" and "Y" if and only if "X" and "Y" have the same number of elements. Indeed, in axiomatic set theory, this is taken as the definition of "same number of elements" (equinumerosity), and generalising this definition to infinite sets leads to the concept of cardinal number, a way to distinguish the various sizes of infinite sets.


title: Bijection

text: Bijections are precisely the isomorphisms in the category "Set" of sets and set functions. However, the bijections are not always the isomorphisms for more complex categories. For example, in the category "Grp" of groups, the morphisms must be homomorphisms since they must preserve the group structure, so the isomorphisms are "group isomorphisms" which are bijective homomorphisms.


title: Bijection

text: The notion of one-to-one correspondence generalizes to partial functions, where they are called "partial bijections", although partial bijections are only required to be injective. The reason for this relaxation is that a (proper) partial function is already undefined for a portion of its domain; thus there is no compelling reason to constrain its inverse to be a total function, i.e. defined everywhere on its domain. The set of all partial bijections on a given base set is called the symmetric inverse semigroup.


title: Bijection

text: Another way of defining the same notion is to say that a partial bijection from "A" to "B" is any relation


title: Bijection

text: "R" (which turns out to be a partial function) with the property that "R" is the graph of a bijection "f":"A′"→"B′", where "A′" is a subset of "A" and "B′" is a subset of "B".


title: Bijection

text: When the partial bijection is on the same set, it is sometimes called a "one-to-one partial transformation". An example is the Möbius transformation simply defined on the complex plane, rather than its completion to the extended complex plane.


title: Bijection

text: This topic is a basic concept in set theory and can be found in any text which includes an introduction to set theory. Almost all texts that deal with an introduction to writing proofs will include a section on set theory, so the topic may be found in any of these:


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Emperor Gaozu of Han (256 – 1 June 195 BC), born Liu Bang () with courtesy name Ji (季), was the founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigning in 202–195 BC. His temple name was "Taizu" while his posthumous name was Emperor Gao, or Gaodi; "Gaozu of Han", derived from the "Records of the Grand Historian", is the common way of referring to this sovereign even though he was not accorded the temple name "Gaozu", which literally means "High Founder".


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu Bang was one of the few dynasty founders in Chinese history who was born into a peasant family. Prior to coming to power, Liu Bang initially served for the Qin dynasty as a minor law enforcement officer in his home town Pei County, within the conquered state of Chu. With the First Emperor's death and the Qin Empire's subsequent political chaos, Liu Bang renounced his civil service position and became an anti-Qin rebel leader. He won the race against fellow rebel leader Xiang Yu to invade the Qin heartland and forced the surrender of the Qin ruler Ziying in 206 BC.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: After the fall of the Qin, Xiang Yu, as the "de facto" chief of the rebel forces, divided the former Qin Empire into the Eighteen Kingdoms, and Liu Bang was forced to accept the poor and remote Bashu region (present-day Sichuan, Chongqing, and southern Shaanxi) with the title "King of Han". Within the year, Liu Bang broke out with his army and conquered the Three Qins, starting a civil war known as the Chu–Han Contention as various forces battled for supremacy over China.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In 202 BC, Liu Bang emerged victorious following the Battle of Gaixia, unified most of China under his control, and established the Han dynasty with himself as the founding emperor. During his reign, Liu Bang reduced taxes and corvée, promoted Confucianism, and suppressed revolts by the lords of non-Liu vassal states, among many other actions. He also initiated the policy of "heqin" to maintain a "de jure" peace between the Han Empire and the Xiongnu after losing the Battle of Baideng in 200 BCE. He died in 195 BCE and was succeeded by his son, Liu Ying.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In imperial Han myth, Liu Bang's ancestors were the mythical Emperor Yao and the Yellow Emperor. Many ancient Chinese noble families claimed descent from the Yellow Emperor to justify their right to rule.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu Bang was born during the late years of the Warring States period; his parents are only remembered as "Liu Taigong" (劉太公; lit. "Old Sir Liu") and "Liu Ao" (劉媪; lit. "Old Madam Liu") His family was from Zhongyang () (Feng () district, Pei County ()) in the state of Chu. According to legend, Liu Bang was conceived after Liu Ao encountered a dragon during a rainstorm.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: According to records, the young Liu was outspoken, charismatic, generous, and forbearing, but he had little interest in education or work and frequently ran into trouble with the law; he was dependent on his brother for subsistence and his father called him "little rascal". Later, he became good friends with Zhang Er (, ?–202 BCE), the magistrate of the nearby Waihuang County and former retainer of Lord Xinling. Liu lived with Zhang Er for several months, until the latter went into hiding after the conquest of Chu by Qin.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu returned to Pei County. His close friends at the county office, Xiao He and Cao Shen, hid his delinquent behaviour and helped him to be appointed as the local sheriff () at Sishui Pavilion (). Liu Bang forged close relationships with most of the local county bureaucrats, and earned a small reputation in the district. While performing statute labour in Xianyang, the Qin capital, he witnessed Qin Shi Huang undertaking an inspection tour; the royal procession impressed Liu.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu's wife, Lü Zhi, was the daughter of Lü Wen (), a wealthy and influential gentry from Shanfu County. After moving to Pei County, Lü Wen held a feast for the local elite. Xiao He, who helped to collect gifts from the guests, declared that a seat inside the hall required gifts worth at least a thousand coins. Liu attended the feast without money, and made an offer of ten thousand coins which Xiao He realized was not serious. Nonetheless, Lü had Liu seated beside him based on appearance alone. Lü, further impressed by Liu in conversation, offered his daughter in marriage. Liu and Lü Zhi were married and had two children, Liu Ying (the future Emperor Hui) and the future Princess Yuan of Lu.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu was responsible for escorting a group of penal laborers to the construction site of the First Emperor's mausoleum at Mount Li. During the journey, some prisoners escaped; under Qin law, allowing prisoners to escape was punishable by death. Rather than face justice, Liu freed the remaining prisoners and fled. Liu was joined by some of the grateful ex-prisoners, and he became their leader. They took over an abandoned stronghold on Mount Mangdang. Liu secretly remained in contact with some old friends, including Xiao He and Cao Shen in Pei County.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: According to the legend of the "Uprising of the Slaying of the White Serpent" (), Liu's ascension to rulership was prophesied after becoming an outlaw. In the legend, a gigantic white serpent killed some of the outlaws with its poisonous breath; the serpent was killed by a drunk Liu during the night. The next morning, the outlaws encountered an old woman along the road; when asked why she was crying she mysteriously disappeared after replying: "My child, the White Emperor's son, has been slain by the son of the Red Emperor." Liu's reputation grew among his followers, who became convinced of his destiny.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In 209 BCE, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang started the anti-Qin Dazexiang Uprising. The magistrate of Pei County considered joining the rebellion, and – on the advice of Xiao He and Cao Shen – invited Liu's group to the county to support him; the invitation was transmitted by Fan Kuai, Liu's brother-in-law. However, the magistrate changed his mind and rescinded the offer; he also ordered Xiao and Cao to be killed lest they open the gates for Liu, but they escaped and joined Liu. On Xiao's advice, Liu secured the aid of commoners from the county beside Pei through written appeals delivered by arrows fired across the border. Peasants responded by killing the Pei County magistrate and welcoming Liu's return. Liu became known as the self-styled "Duke of Pei" ().


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In 208 BC, the Qin empire faced rebellions that sought to restore the states conquered during the wars of unification. In Wu County, the uprising of Xiang Liang – a commoner and son of a Chu general – installed Xiong Xin as "King Huai II" () of Chu. Liu joined Xiang Liang's uprising. After Xiang Liang was killed at the Battle of Dingtao, Huai II sent Xiang Yu – Xiang Liang's nephew – and minister Song Yi to lead an army to reinforce the Zhao state against the attacking Qin.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu Bang was made "Marquis of Wu'an" () and ordered to lead an army against Guanzhong in the Qin heartland. Huai II promised to grant rulership of Guanzhong as "King of Guanzhong" to whoever entered the region first. In 206 BC, Liu Bang won the race to Guanzhong over Xiang and arrived outside Xianyang, the Qin capital. The last Qin ruler, Ziying, surrendered the city without resistance. Liu's occupation policies were informed by Fan Kuai – now his bodyguard – and Zhang Liang – his strategist. Troops were forbidden from mistreating the population and looting. The harsh Qin laws were abolished; murder, robbery and burglary remained subject to strict punishments. Order was quickly restored in the city, and Liu won the respect of the Guanzhong population. Xiao He ordered the collection of all legal documents in the Qin palace and government facilities for preservation.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Xiang Yu disliked losing the race to Guanzhong. On the advice of Fan Zeng – his advisor – and Cao Wushang () – an informer from Liu's camp – Xiang Yu planned to hold a banquet in which to assassinate Liu. Xiang Yu was persuaded by Xiang Bo, his uncle and a close friend of Zhang Liang, not to order the assassination during the banquet. Frustrated by the indecision, Fan Zeng ordered Xiang Zhuang, Xiang Yu's cousin, to perform and kill Liu during a sword dance, but this was stymied by Xiang Bo joining the dance and protecting Liu. Zhang Liang slipped away and summoned Fan Kuai, who arrived at the banquet in full armor and scolded Xiang Yu for the sinister plot. Embarrassed by Fan Kuai's accusation, Xiang Yu ordered the sword dance to stop and rewarded Fan Kuai for his bravery. Liu Bang escaped Xiang Yu's camp after pretending to go to the latrine, and then led his army westward. Xiang Yu then sacked Xianyang and burned the Epang Palace.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: After occupying Xianyang, Xiang Yu proclaimed himself the "Hegemon-King of Western Chu" and split the former Qin Empire into the Eighteen Kingdoms. He gave Guanzhong to three former Qin generals – Zhang Han, Sima Xin and Dong Yi – instead of to Liu. Liu received the isolated Bashu region (Sichuan Basin and upper Han River valley), then a place used for exiling prisoners, as Xiang Yu claimed that Bashu was part of Guanzhong. Zhang Liang, who was leaving for his native state of Han, negotiated a better arrangement on Liu's behalf after bribing Xiang Yu through Xiang Bo. To Liu, Xiang Yu added Nanzheng, the surrounding rift valley region around the (then) middle Han River, and the title of "King of Han".


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu's army was escorted across the Qinling Mountains by a detachment of Xiang Yu's army. On Zhang Liang's advice, Liu burned the gallery roads behind him to prevent attack by Xiang Yu, and to reassure Xiang Yu that he would not return.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: From 206 to 202 BC, Liu Bang engaged Xiang Yu in a power struggle – historically known as the Chu–Han contention – for supremacy over China, while simultaneously attacking and subjugating the other kingdoms.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu Bang's migration into Nanzheng was far from pleasant – his followers were mostly from the Wu and Chu flatland regions and adapted poorly in the mountainous Bashu lands, and deserters grew on a daily basis. Liu Bang also grew temperamental, as he was very unhappy with his own predicament. One night, rumor arrived that Xiao He also disappeared, and Liu Bang almost had a nervous breakdown. When Xiao He returned the following morning, Liu Bang furiously confronted him and demanded an explanation. Xiao He revealed that he was in a rush chasing back an extremely talented military strategist named Han Xin, who was then merely a low-ranking officer only recently recruited into Liu Bang's army. Xiao He then introduced Liu Bang to Han Xin, who laid out his strategic plan to conquer the states. Impressed and convinced, Liu Bang formally assigned Han Xin as the supreme commander of his army.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Meanwhile, Xiang Yu's overbearing and arbitrary handling over the enfeoffments created much anger among the rebel leaders. Merely four months after Liu Bang's departure into Bashu, a rebellion broke out in the Qi kingdom in late 206 BCE, and Xiang Yu left Western Chu to suppress the revolt. Under Han Xin's advise, Liu Bang sent men to pretend trying to repair the previously burnt gallery roads, drawing away the attention of the Three Qins. At the same time, Han Xin used the distraction to invade Guanzhong unexpectedly via Chencang, and quickly defeated Zhang Han in a surprise attack. Following that, Sima Xin and Dong Yi both surrendered to Liu Bang, and by August or September 205 BC the Three Qins became part of Liu's Kingdom of Han.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: With Xiang Yu occupied to the east, Liu Bang collected a force of 560,000 troops from his subordinate lands, and marched east to attack Western Chu. En route, he encountered Peng Yue, who joined his cause upon promise of a fiefdom in Wei. As opposed to combining forces, Liu Bang sent Peng Yue's 30,000 troops to pacify the surrounding area. Liu Bang's army entered Xiang Yu's capital of Pengcheng apparently unopposed, looting its valuables and taking its women, but discipline had become lax and each day found the Han troops deeper in their cups.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Hearing of the fall of Pengcheng, Xiang Yu ordered the bulk of his forces to maintain the attack on Qi, while he personally led 30,000 crack troops to retake the capital. He encamped about ten miles from a city in present-day Xiao County, Anhui, and launched an attack on Pengcheng at dawn, and by noon had routed the unprepared Han army, driving them into the nearby Gu and Si Rivers, where over 100,000 men drowned or were killed by Chu soldiers. The remaining Han troops fled south to high ground, but were cornered by Chu forces by the Sui River, where another 100,000 drowned, their corpses damming up the river.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu Bang escaped the city with a handful of mounted bodyguards, heading to nearby Pei to collect his family. Xiang Yu also dispatched troops to Pei in an attempt to capture Liu Bang's family. His family had all fled, but Liu Bang encountered on the road his eldest daughter and second eldest son Liu Ying. The Chu army coerced a local into leading them to capture two of Liu Bang's family as hostages: his father Liu Taigong and wife Lü Zhi. One account states Liu Bang's mother was also captured. The "Records of the Grand Historian" recounts an event during this conflict, an event omitted from Liu Bang's own biography but present in the biography of Xiang Yu, where Liu Bang pushed his own children out of his carriage three times to lighten it in a desperate attempt to escape Xiang Yu's men, and it is only the repeated intervention of Xiahou Ying that secures the children's escape.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: After the disastrous defeat at Pengcheng, the strength of the Han forces decreased drastically. Many of the kings who had surrendered to Liu Bang earlier had also defected to Xiang Yu's side. Moreover, the Qi and Zhao kingdoms, which were previously at war with Chu, also requested to make peace with Chu.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Upon reaching Xiayi (下邑; east of present-day Dangshan County, Suzhou, Anhui), which was defended by his brother-in-law, Liu Bang reorganised his troops for a retreat. When he arrived at Yu (虞; present-day Yucheng County, Shangqiu, Henan), he sent an envoy to meet Ying Bu (King of Jiujiang) to appeal for support. Ying Bu, who held a grudge over Xiang Yu's unfair enfeoffment over the Eighteen Kingdoms, agreed to join Liu Bang and rebelled against Western Chu. Xiang Yu responded by sending Long Ju to attack Ying Bu.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In 205 BC, Liu Bang named his son Liu Ying as his crown prince and ordered him to defend Yueyang. Shortly after, Han forces conquered Feiqiu (廢丘; present-day Xingping, Shaanxi), which was guarded by Zhang Han, who committed suicide after his defeat. On another front, Ying Bu was unable to defeat Long Ju so he gave up on Jiujiang and went to join Liu Bang. Liu Bang reorganised his army, which now included reinforcements from Guanzhong (sent by Xiao He) and Han Xin's troops, and attacked Chu at Jing County (京縣; around present-day Xingyang, Zhengzhou, Henan) and Suoting (索亭; near present-day Xingyang, Henan). He emerged victorious, and drove Xiang Yu's forces east of Xingyang.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In 204 BC, after sustaining losses from Chu attacks on the newly built supply routes from Xingyang, the Han army was running short of supplies. Liu Bang negotiated for an armistice with Xiang Yu and agreed to cede the lands east of Xingyang to Western Chu. Xiang Yu wanted to accept Liu Bang's offer, but Fan Zeng advised him to reject it and use the opportunity to destroy Liu Bang. Xiang Yu changed his mind, pressed the attack on Xingyang and besieged Liu Bang's forces inside the city. Liu Bang heeded Chen Ping's suggestion to bribe Xiang Yu's men with 40,000 catties of gold for them to spread rumours that Fan Zeng had the intention of betraying Xiang Yu. Xiang Yu fell for the ruse and dismissed Fan Zeng.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Later that year, while Xiang Yu was away suppressing the rebellion in the Qi kingdom, Li Yiji advised Liu Bang to use the opportunity to attack Western Chu. Han forces conquered Chenggao and defeated the Chu army led by Cao Jiu near the Si River. Liu Bang's forces advanced further until they reached Guangwu (廣武). Chu forces led by Zhongli Mo were trapped by the Han army at the east of Xingyang. Following Han Xin's victory in the Battle of Wei River, the Chu army's morale fell and it ran short of supplies months later. Xiang Yu had no choice but to request to make peace with Liu Bang and released Liu's family members, who were held hostage by him. Chu and Han agreed to a ceasefire at the Treaty of Hong Canal (鴻溝和約), which divided China into east and west under their respective domains.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In 203 BC, while Xiang Yu was retreating eastward, Liu Bang, acting on the advice of Zhang Liang and Chen Ping, renounced the Treaty of Hong Canal and ordered an attack on Western Chu. He also requested assistance from Han Xin and Peng Yue to attack Xiang Yu simultaneously from three directions. However, Han Xin and Peng Yue did not mobilise their troops and Liu Bang was defeated by Xiang Yu at Guling (固陵; south of present-day Taikang County, Zhoukou, Henan), and was forced to retreat and reinforce his defences. At the same time, he sent messengers to meet Han Xin and Peng Yue again, and promised to give them land and titles if they joined him in attacking Xiang Yu, and they finally agreed.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Three months later in 202 BC, Han forces led by Liu Bang, Han Xin and Peng Yue attacked Western Chu from three directions. The Chu army was running low on supplies and Xiang Yu was trapped in Gaixia. Han Xin ordered his troops to sing Chu folk songs to create a false impression that the Chu homeland had fallen to Han forces. The Chu army's morale plummeted and many soldiers deserted. Xiang Yu attempted to break out of the siege, and after fighting out of repeated traps was left with only 28 men when he reached the northern bank of the Wu River (near present-day He County, Chaohu City, Anhui). He made a last stand and managed to slay several hundred Han soldiers before eventually committing suicide.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In 202 BCE, Liu Bang was enthroned as the emperor with support from his subjects even though he expressed reluctance to take the throne. He named his dynasty "Han", and was historically known as "Emperor Gaozu" (or "Emperor Gao"). He established the capital in Luoyang (later moved to Chang'an) and instated his official spouse Lü Zhi as the empress and their son Liu Ying as the crown prince.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: The following year, Emperor Gaozu wanted to reward his subjects who had contributed to the founding of the Han Empire, but the process dragged on for a year because they could not agree on the distribution of the rewards. The emperor thought that Xiao He's contributions were the greatest, so he awarded Xiao the title "Marquis of Zan" and gave him the largest amount of food stores. Some of the others expressed objections because they thought that Xiao was not directly involved in battle so his contributions should not be considered the greatest. Emperor Gaozu replied that Xiao He should receive the highest credit because he planned their overall strategy in the war against Xiang Yu. He named Cao Shen as the person who made the greatest contributions in battle and rewarded him and the others accordingly.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Emperor Gaozu disbanded his armies and allowed the soldiers to return home. He gave an order stating that the people who remained in Guanzhong were exempted from taxes and corvée for 12 years while those who returned to their respective native territories were exempted for six years and that the central government would provide for them for a year. He also granted freedom to those who had sold themselves into slavery to avoid hunger during the wars. In 195 BC, the emperor issued two decrees: the first officialised the lowering of taxes and corvée; the second set the amount of tribute to be paid by the vassal kings to the imperial court in the 10th month of every year. The land tax on agricultural production was reduced to a rate of 1/15 of crop yield. He also privatised the coinage.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In his early days, Emperor Gaozu disliked reading and scorned Confucianism. After becoming the emperor, he still held the same attitudes towards Confucianism as he did before until he encountered the scholar Lu Jia (or Lu Gu). Lu Gu wrote a 12-volume book, "Xinyu" (), which espoused the benefits of governing by moral virtue as opposed to using harsh and punitive laws (as it was under the Qin dynasty). Lu Gu read each volume to the emperor after he finished writing it. The emperor was deeply impressed. Under Emperor Gaozu's reign, Confucianism flourished and gradually replaced Legalism (of Qin times) as the state ideology. Confucian scholars, including Lu Gu, were recruited to serve in the government. The emperor also reformed the legal system by relaxing some laws inherited from the Qin regime and reducing the severity of certain penalties. In January to February 195 BC, after suppressing a rebellion by Ying Bu, he passed by Shandong, the birthplace of Confucius, and personally prepared for a ceremony to pay respect to the philosopher.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In his later years, Emperor Gaozu favoured Concubine Qi and neglected Empress Lü Zhi. He thought that Liu Ying, his heir apparent (born to the empress), was too weak to be a ruler. Thus, he had the intention of replacing Liu Ying with another son, Liu Ruyi, who was born to Concubine Qi. Lü Zhi became worried, so she asked Zhang Liang to help her son maintain his position. Zhang Liang recommended four reclusive wise men, the Four Whiteheads of Mount Shang, to help Liu Ying.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: In 195 BC as Emperor Gaozu's health started to worsen, he desired even more to replace Liu Ying with Liu Ruyi as the crown prince. Zhang Liang tried to dissuade him but was ignored, so he retired on the excuse that he was ill. Shusun Tong (the crown prince's tutor) and Zhou Chang also strongly objected to the emperor's decision to replace Liu Ying with Liu Ruyi. Zhou Chang said, "I am not good in arguing, but I know this is not right. If Your Majesty deposes the Crown Prince, I won't follow your orders any more." Zhou Chang was outspoken and had a stutter, which to some made his speech very amusing. The emperor laughed. After that, the Four Whiteheads of Mount Shang (also known as the Four Haos of Mount Shang) showed up in the court. Emperor Gaozu was surprised to see them because they had previously declined to join the civil service when he invited them. The four men promised to help Liu Ying in the future if he were to remain as the crown prince. The emperor was pleased to see that Liu Ying had their support so he dismissed the idea of changing his heir apparent.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: After establishing the Han dynasty, Emperor Gaozu appointed princes and vassal kings to help him govern the Han Empire and gave each of them a piece of land. There were seven vassal kings who were not related to the imperial clan: Zang Tu, the King of Yan; Hán Xin, the King of Hán; Han Xin, the King of Chu; Peng Yue, the King of Liang; Ying Bu, the King of Huainan; Zhang Er, the King of Zhao; Wu Rui, the King of Changsha. However, later, the emperor became worried that the vassal kings might rebel against him because they, after all, had no blood relations with him. Han Xin and Peng Yue were (falsely) accused of treason, arrested and executed along with their families. Ying Bu and Zang Tu rebelled against him but were defeated and killed. Only Wu Rui and Zhang Er were left.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: The Xiongnu in the north had been a threat since the Qin dynasty. Qin Shi Huang had sent the general Meng Tian to oversee the defences on the Qin Empire's northern border and the construction of the Great Wall to repel the invaders. Meng Tian achieved success in deterring the Xiongnu from advancing beyond the border. However, after the Qin dynasty collapsed, the Xiongnu seized the opportunity to move south and raid the border again. In 201 BCE, Hán Xin (King of Hán) defected to the Xiongnu leader, Modu. In the following year, Emperor Gaozu led an army to attack the Xiongnu but was besieged and trapped by the enemy at the Battle of Baideng. Acting on Chen Ping's advice, he bribed Modu's wife with gifts and got her to ask her husband to withdraw his forces. Modu did so. After returning to the capital, Emperor Gaozu, acting on advice from Liu (Lou) Jing, initiated the policy of "heqin", which involved sending noble ladies to marry the Xiongnu leaders and paying annual tribute to the Xiongnu in exchange for peace between the Han Empire and the Xiongnu.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Gaozu is also recorded as having a pillow companion by the name of Ji Ru, who was said to have more access to the emperor than his own ministers. The founding emperor's example of elevating a male lover to the top of the administration would be followed by nine further rulers of the Han Dynasty.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Emperor Gaozu was wounded by a stray arrow during the campaign against Ying Bu. He became seriously ill and remained in his inner chambers for a long period of time and ordered his guards to deny entry to everyone who tried to visit him. After several days, Fan Kuai barged into the chambers to see the emperor and the other subjects followed behind him. They saw Emperor Gaozu lying on his bed and attended to by a eunuch. Fan Kuai said, "How glorious it was when Your Majesty first led us to conquer the empire and how weary we are now. Your subjects are worried when they learn that Your Majesty is ill, but Your Majesty refuses to see us and prefers the company of a eunuch instead. Has Your Majesty forgotten the incident about Zhao Gao?" The emperor laughed and got out of bed to meet his subjects.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Emperor Gaozu's health deteriorated later so Empress Lü Zhi hired a famous physician to heal him. When Emperor Gaozu enquired about his condition, the physician told him that his illness could be cured, but the emperor was displeased and he scolded the physician, "Isn't it Heaven's will that I managed to conquer this empire in simple clothing and with nothing but a sword? My life is determined by Heaven. It is useless even if Bian Que is here!" He refused to continue with the treatment and sent the physician away. Before his death, he said that Cao Shen could succeed Xiao He as the chancellor after Xiao died, and that Wang Ling could succeed Cao Shen. He also said that Wang Ling might be too young to perform his duties so Chen Ping could assist Wang, but Chen was also qualified to assume the responsibilities of a chancellor all by himself. He also named Zhou Bo as a possible candidate for the role of Grand Commandant. He died in Changle Palace (), Chang'an, on 1 June 195 BCE and was succeeded by Liu Ying, who became historically known as Emperor Hui.


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: The "Song of the Great Wind" was a song composed by Liu Bang in 195 BC when he visited his hometown in Pei County after suppressing Ying Bu's rebellion. He prepared a banquet and invited all his old friends and townsfolk to join him. After some drinks, Liu Bang played the guqin and sang the "Song of the Great Wind".


title: Emperor Gaozu of Han

text: Liu Bang is one of the 32 historical figures who appear as special characters in the video game "Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI" by Koei. His life story has also been dramatized in numerous TV series and films (see Chu–Han Contention#Cultural references).


title: Miguel Sapochnik

text: Miguel Sapochnik (born 1 July 1974) is an English film and television director of Argentine origin, and former storyboard artist. For his work as a director on the HBO epic fantasy series "Game of Thrones", he won the award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series at the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards and Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Drama Series at the 69th Directors Guild of America Awards. Sapochnik also directed the science fiction film "Repo Men".


title: Miguel Sapochnik

text: Born as Miguel Vicente Rosenberg-Sapochnik in London, England, Sapochnik began his career as a storyboard artist; some of his credits include "Trainspotting" (1996, directed by Danny Boyle) and "The Winter Guest" (1997, actor Alan Rickman's directorial debut).


title: Miguel Sapochnik

text: In 2000, Sapochnik directed a 2000 short film titled "The Dreamer", which he wrote and directed. He also directed the "Beautiful Inside" music video for singer Louise.


title: Miguel Sapochnik

text: Sapochnik's feature film directorial debut was "Repo Men" (2010), starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker.


title: Miguel Sapochnik

text: Sapochnik has worked on American television series, directing episodes of "Awake" (2012), "Fringe" (2011–12), "House" (2011–12) and "Mind Games" (2014).


title: Miguel Sapochnik

text: In 2015, Sapochnik directed two episodes of "Game of Thrones" for the show's fifth season, "The Gift" and "Hardhome." He returned to direct the final two episodes of "Game of Thrones" sixth season, "Battle of the Bastards" and "The Winds of Winter". All of these episodes received acclaim from both critics and viewers. Sapochnik won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series at the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards, for directing "Battle of the Bastards".


title: Miguel Sapochnik

text: In September 2017, he directed the third ("The Long Night") and fifth ("The Bells") episodes of the final season of "Game of Thrones".


title: Miguel Sapochnik

text: He was one of two showrunners of "House of the Dragon", the first season of which premiered in premiered on August 21, 2022. In August 2022, it was announced that he would be leaving the show after the first season.


title: Calamine

text: Calamine, also known as calamine lotion, is a medication used to treat mild itchiness. This includes from sunburn, insect bites, poison ivy, poison oak, and other mild skin conditions. It may also help dry out skin irritation. It is applied on the skin as a cream or lotion.


title: Calamine

text: Side effects may include skin irritation. It is considered to be safe in pregnancy. Calamine is a combination of zinc oxide and 0.5% ferric oxide (FeO). The lotion is produced with additional ingredients such as phenol and calcium hydroxide.


title: Calamine

text: The use of calamine lotion dates back as far as 1500 BC. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. Calamine is available over-the-counter as a generic medication.


title: Calamine

text: Calamine is used to treat itchiness. This includes sunburn, insect bite, or other mild skin conditions.


title: Calamine

text: The FDA recommends applying some topical over-the-counter skin products, such as calamine, to absorb the weeping of the skin caused by poisonous plants such as poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. For relieving the pain or itching caused by these plants, the FDA document recommends a cold water compress and topical corticosteroids.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Alexander Grothendieck (; ; ; 28 March 1928 – 13 November 2014) was a stateless mathematician who became the leading figure in the creation of modern algebraic geometry. His research extended the scope of the field and added elements of commutative algebra, homological algebra, sheaf theory, and category theory to its foundations, while his so-called "relative" perspective led to revolutionary advances in many areas of pure mathematics. He is considered by many to be the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Grothendieck began his productive and public career as a mathematician in 1949. In 1958, he was appointed a research professor at the Institut des hautes études scientifiques (IHÉS) and remained there until 1970, when, driven by personal and political convictions, he left following a dispute over military funding. He received the Fields Medal in 1966 for advances in algebraic geometry, homological algebra, and K-theory. He later became professor at the University of Montpellier and, while still producing relevant mathematical work, he withdrew from the mathematical community and devoted himself to political and religious pursuits (first Buddhism and later, a more Christian vision). In 1991, he moved to the French village of Lasserre in the Pyrenees, where he lived in seclusion, still working tirelessly on mathematics and his philosophical and religious thoughts until his death in 2014.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Grothendieck was born in Berlin to anarchist parents. His father, Alexander "Sascha" Schapiro (also known as Alexander Tanaroff), had Hasidic Jewish roots and had been imprisoned in Russia before moving to Germany in 1922, while his mother, Johanna "Hanka" Grothendieck, came from a Protestant German family in Hamburg and worked as a journalist. As teenagers, both of his parents had broken away from their early backgrounds. At the time of his birth, Grothendieck's mother was married to the journalist Johannes Raddatz and initially, his birth name was recorded as "Alexander Raddatz." That marriage was dissolved in 1929 and Schapiro acknowledged his paternity, but never married Hanka Grothendieck. Grothendieck had a maternal sibling, his half sister Maidi.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Grothendieck lived with his parents in Berlin until the end of 1933, when his father moved to Paris to evade Nazism. His mother followed soon thereafter. Grothendieck was left in the care of Wilhelm Heydorn, a Lutheran pastor and teacher in Hamburg. According to Winfried Scharlau, during this time, his parents took part in the Spanish Civil War as non-combatant auxiliaries. However, others state that Schapiro fought in the anarchist militia.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In May 1939, Grothendieck was put on a train in Hamburg for France. Shortly afterward his father was interned in Le Vernet. He and his mother were then interned in various camps from 1940 to 1942 as "undesirable dangerous foreigners." The first camp was the Rieucros Camp, where his mother contracted the tuberculosis that eventually caused her death. While there, Grothendieck managed to attend the local school, at Mendel. Once, he managed to escape from the camp, intending to assassinate Hitler. Later, his mother Hanka was transferred to the Gurs internment camp for the remainder of World War II. Grothendieck was permitted to live separated from his mother. In the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, he was sheltered and hidden in local boarding houses or pensions, although he occasionally had to seek refuge in the woods during Nazi raids, surviving at times without food or water for several days. His father was arrested under the Vichy anti-Jewish legislation, and sent to the Drancy internment camp, and then handed over by the French Vichy government to the Germans to be sent to be murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. In Le Chambon, Grothendieck attended the Collège Cévenol (now known as the Le Collège-Lycée Cévenol International), a unique secondary school founded in 1938 by local Protestant pacifists and anti-war activists. Many of the refugee children hidden in Le Chambon attended Collège Cévenol, and it was at this school that Grothendieck apparently first became fascinated with mathematics.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: After the war, the young Grothendieck studied mathematics in France, initially at the University of Montpellier where at first he did not perform well, failing such classes as astronomy. Working on his own, he rediscovered the Lebesgue measure. After three years of increasingly independent studies there, he went to continue his studies in Paris in 1948.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Initially, Grothendieck attended Henri Cartan's Seminar at École Normale Supérieure, but he lacked the necessary background to follow the high-powered seminar. On the advice of Cartan and André Weil, he moved to the University of Nancy where two leading experts were working on Grothendieck's area of interest, topological vector spaces: Jean Dieudonné and Laurent Schwartz. The latter had recently won a Fields Medal. He showed his new student his latest paper; it ended with a list of 14 open questions, relevant for locally convex spaces. Grothendieck introduced new mathematical methods that enabled him to solve all of these problems within a few months.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In Nancy, he wrote his dissertation under those two professors on functional analysis, from 1950 to 1953. At this time he was a leading expert in the theory of topological vector spaces. In 1953 he moved to the University of São Paulo in Brazil, where he immigrated by means of a Nansen passport, given that he had refused to take French nationality (as that would have entailed military service against his convictions). He stayed in São Paulo (apart from a lengthy visit in France from October 1953 - March 1954) until the end of 1954. His published work from the time spent in Brazil is still in the theory of topological vector spaces; it is there that he completed his last major work on that topic (on "metric" theory of Banach spaces).


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Grothendieck moved to Lawrence, Kansas at the beginning of 1955, and there he set his old subject aside in order to work in algebraic topology and homological algebra, and increasingly in algebraic geometry. It was in Lawrence that Grothendieck developed his theory of Abelian categories and the reformulation of sheaf cohomology based on them, leading to the very influential "Tôhoku paper".


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In 1957 he was invited to visit Harvard by Oscar Zariski, but the offer fell through when he refused to sign a pledge promising not to work to overthrow the United States government, a position that, he was warned, might have landed him in prison. The prospect of prison did not worry him, so long as he could have access to books.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Comparing Grothendieck during his Nancy years to the École Normale Supérieure–trained students at that time (Pierre Samuel, Roger Godement, René Thom, Jacques Dixmier, Jean Cerf, Yvonne Bruhat, Jean-Pierre Serre, and Bernard Malgrange), Leila Schneps said:


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In 1958, Grothendieck was installed at the Institut des hautes études scientifiques (IHÉS), a new privately funded research institute that, in effect, had been created for Jean Dieudonné and Grothendieck. Grothendieck attracted attention by an intense and highly productive activity of seminars there ("de facto" working groups drafting into foundational work some of the ablest French and other mathematicians of the younger generation). Grothendieck practically ceased publication of papers through the conventional, learned journal route. He was, however, able to play a dominant role in mathematics for approximately a decade, gathering a strong school.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Officially during this time, he had as students Michel Demazure (who worked on SGA3, on group schemes), Luc Illusie (cotangent complex), Michel Raynaud, Jean-Louis Verdier (co-founder of the derived category theory), and Pierre Deligne. Collaborators on the SGA projects also included Michael Artin (étale cohomology), Nick Katz (monodromy theory, and Lefschetz pencils). Jean Giraud worked out torsor theory extensions of nonabelian cohomology there as well. Many others such as David Mumford, Robin Hartshorne, Barry Mazur and C.P. Ramanujam were also involved.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Alexander Grothendieck's work during what is described as the "Golden Age" period at the IHÉS established several unifying themes in algebraic geometry, number theory, topology, category theory, and complex analysis. His first (pre-IHÉS) discovery in algebraic geometry was the Grothendieck–Hirzebruch–Riemann–Roch theorem, a generalisation of the Hirzebruch–Riemann–Roch theorem proved algebraically; in this context he also introduced K-theory. Then, following the programme he outlined in his talk at the 1958 International Congress of Mathematicians, he introduced the theory of schemes, developing it in detail in his "Éléments de géométrie algébrique" ("EGA") and providing the new more flexible and general foundations for algebraic geometry that has been adopted in the field since that time. He went on to introduce the étale cohomology theory of schemes, providing the key tools for proving the Weil conjectures, as well as crystalline cohomology and algebraic de Rham cohomology to complement it. Closely linked to these cohomology theories, he originated topos theory as a generalisation of topology (relevant also in categorical logic). He also provided an algebraic definition of fundamental groups of schemes and more generally the main structures of a categorical Galois theory. As a framework for his coherent duality theory, he also introduced derived categories, which were further developed by Verdier.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: The results of his work on these and other topics were published in the "EGA" and in less polished form in the notes of the "Séminaire de géométrie algébrique" ("SGA") that he directed at the IHÉS.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Grothendieck's political views were radical and pacifistic. He strongly opposed both United States intervention in Vietnam and Soviet military expansionism. To protest against the Vietnam War, he gave lectures on category theory in the forests surrounding Hanoi while the city was being bombed. In 1966, he had declined to attend the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Moscow, where he was to receive the Fields Medal. He retired from scientific life around 1970 after he had found out that IHÉS was partly funded by the military. He returned to academia a few years later as a professor at the University of Montpellier.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: While the issue of military funding was perhaps the most obvious explanation for Grothendieck's departure from the IHÉS, those who knew him say that the causes of the rupture ran more deeply. Pierre Cartier, a "visiteur de longue durée" ("long-term guest") at the IHÉS, wrote a piece about Grothendieck for a special volume published on the occasion of the IHÉS's fortieth anniversary. In that publication, Cartier notes that as the son of an antimilitary anarchist and one who grew up among the disenfranchised, Grothendieck always had a deep compassion for the poor and the downtrodden. As Cartier puts it, Grothendieck came to find Bures-sur-Yvette as ""une cage dorée"" ("a gilded cage"). While Grothendieck was at the IHÉS, opposition to the Vietnam War was heating up, and Cartier suggests that this also reinforced Grothendieck's distaste at having become a mandarin of the scientific world. In addition, after several years at the IHÉS, Grothendieck seemed to cast about for new intellectual interests. By the late 1960s, he had started to become interested in scientific areas outside mathematics. David Ruelle, a physicist who joined the IHÉS faculty in 1964, said that Grothendieck came to talk to him a few times about physics. Biology interested Grothendieck much more than physics, and he organized some seminars on biological topics.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In 1970, Grothendieck, with two other mathematicians, Claude Chevalley and Pierre Samuel, created a political group entitled "Survivre"—the name later changed to "Survivre et vivre". The group published a bulletin and was dedicated to antimilitary and ecological issues. It also developed strong criticism of the indiscriminate use of science and technology. Grothendieck devoted the next three years to this group and served as the main editor of its bulletin.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Although Grothendieck continued with mathematical enquiries, his standard mathematical career mostly ended when he left the IHÉS. After leaving the IHÉS, Grothendieck became a temporary professor at Collège de France for two years. He then became a professor at the University of Montpellier, where he became increasingly estranged from the mathematical community. He formally retired in 1988, a few years after having accepted a research position at the CNRS.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: While not publishing mathematical research in conventional ways during the 1980s, he produced several influential manuscripts with limited distribution, with both mathematical and biographical content.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Produced during 1980 and 1981, "La Longue Marche à travers la théorie de Galois" ("The Long March Through Galois Theory") is a 1600-page handwritten manuscript containing many of the ideas that led to the "Esquisse d'un programme". It also includes a study of Teichmüller theory.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In 1983, stimulated by correspondence with Ronald Brown and Tim Porter at Bangor University, Grothendieck wrote a 600-page manuscript entitled "Pursuing Stacks". It began with a letter addressed to Daniel Quillen. This letter and successive parts were distributed from Bangor (see External links below). Within these, in an informal, diary-like manner, Grothendieck explained and developed his ideas on the relationship between algebraic homotopy theory and algebraic geometry and prospects for a noncommutative theory of stacks. The manuscript, which is being edited for publication by G. Maltsiniotis, later led to another of his monumental works, "Les Dérivateurs". Written in 1991, this latter opus of approximately 2000 pages, further developed the homotopical ideas begun in "Pursuing Stacks". Much of this work anticipated the subsequent development during the mid-1990s of the motivic homotopy theory of Fabien Morel and Vladimir Voevodsky.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In 1984, Grothendieck wrote the proposal "Esquisse d'un Programme" ("Sketch of a Programme") for a position at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). It describes new ideas for studying the moduli space of complex curves. Although Grothendieck never published his work in this area, the proposal inspired other mathematicians to work in the area by becoming the source of dessin d'enfant theory and Anabelian geometry. Later, it was published in two-volumes and entitled "Geometric Galois Actions" (Cambridge University Press, 1997).


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: During this period, Grothendieck also gave his consent to publishing some of his drafts for EGA on Bertini-type theorems ("EGA" V, published in Ulam Quarterly in 1992–1993 and later made available on the Grothendieck Circle web site in 2004).


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In the 1,000-page autobiographical manuscript, "Récoltes et semailles" (1986), Grothendieck describes his approach to mathematics and his experiences in the mathematical community, a community that initially accepted him in an open and welcoming manner, but which he progressively perceived to be governed by competition and status. He complains about what he saw as the "burial" of his work and betrayal by his former students and colleagues after he had left the community. The "Récoltes et semailles" work is now available on the internet in the French original, and an English translation is underway. A Japanese translation in four volumes was completed by Tsuji Yuichi, a friend of Grothendieck from the "Survivre" period, and its first three volumes were published between 1989 and 1993, while the fourth volume is completed, but it never has been published. Grothendieck helped with the translation and wrote a preface for it. Parts of "Récoltes et semailles" have been translated into Spanish, as well as into a Russian translation that was published in Moscow. The French original was finally published in two volumes in January 2022, with additional texts by people of various professions who discuss certain aspects of the book.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In 1988, Grothendieck declined the Crafoord Prize with an open letter to the media. He wrote that he and other established mathematicians had no need for additional financial support and criticized what he saw as the declining ethics of the scientific community that was characterized by outright scientific theft that he believed had become commonplace and tolerated. The letter also expressed his belief that totally unforeseen events before the end of the century would lead to an unprecedented collapse of civilization. Grothendieck added however that his views were "in no way meant as a criticism of the Royal Academy's aims in the administration of its funds" and he added, "I regret the inconvenience that my refusal to accept the Crafoord prize may have caused you and the Royal Academy."


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: "La Clef des Songes", a 315-page manuscript written in 1987, is Grothendieck's account of how his consideration of the source of dreams led him to conclude that a deity exists. As part of the notes to this manuscript, Grothendieck described the life and the work of 18 "mutants", people whom he admired as visionaries far ahead of their time and heralding a new age. The only mathematician on his list was Bernhard Riemann. Influenced by the Catholic mystic Marthe Robin who was claimed to have survived on the Holy Eucharist alone, Grothendieck almost starved himself to death in 1988. His growing preoccupation with spiritual matters was also evident in a letter entitled "Lettre de la Bonne Nouvelle" sent to 250 friends in January 1990. In it, he described his encounters with a deity and announced that a "New Age" would commence on 14 October 1996.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: The "Grothendieck Festschrift", published in 1990, was a three-volume collection of research papers to mark his sixtieth birthday in 1988.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: More than 20,000 pages of Grothendieck's mathematical and other writings are held at the University of Montpellier and remain unpublished. They have been digitized for preservation and are freely available in open access through the Institut Montpelliérain Alexander Grothendieck portal.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In 1991, Grothendieck moved to a new address that he did not provide to his previous contacts in the mathematical community. Very few people visited him afterward. Local villagers helped sustain him with a more varied diet after he tried to live on a staple of dandelion soup. At some point, Leila Schneps and Pierre Lochak located him, then carried on a brief correspondence. Thus they became among "the last members of the mathematical establishment to come into contact with him". After his death, it was revealed that he lived alone in a house in Lasserre, Ariège, a small village at the foot of the Pyrenees.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: In January 2010, Grothendieck wrote the letter entitled "Déclaration d'intention de non-publication" to Luc Illusie, claiming that all materials published in his absence had been published without his permission. He asked that none of his work be reproduced in whole or in part and that copies of this work be removed from libraries. He characterized a website devoted to his work as "an abomination". His dictate may have been reversed in 2010.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Grothendieck was born in Weimar Germany. In 1938, aged ten, he moved to France as a refugee. Records of his nationality were destroyed in the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945 and he did not apply for French citizenship after the war. Thus, he became a stateless person for at least the majority of his working life and he traveled on a Nansen passport. Part of his reluctance to hold French nationality is attributed to not wishing to serve in the French military, particularly due to the Algerian War (1954–62). He eventually applied for French citizenship in the early 1980s, after he was well past the age that exempted him from military service.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: It is said that he consented to apply for French citienship. There is no evidence that he did, Cartier doesn't say he did, and there is certainly no evidence that he obtained it. He seems to have died stateless.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Grothendieck was very close to his mother to whom he dedicated his dissertation. She died in 1957 from the tuberculosis that she contracted in camps for displaced persons. He had five children: a son with his landlady during his time in Nancy, three children, Johanna (1959), Alexander (1961), and Mathieu (1965) with his wife Mireille Dufour, and one child with Justine Skalba, with whom he lived in a commune in the early 1970s.


title: Alexander Grothendieck

text: Grothendieck's early mathematical work was in functional analysis. Between 1949 and 1953 he worked on his doctoral thesis in this subject at Nancy, supervised by Jean Dieudonné and Laurent Schwartz. His key contributions include topological tensor products of topological vector spaces, the theory of nuclear spaces as foundational for Schwartz distributions, and the application of L spaces in studying linear maps between topological vector spaces. In a few years, he had become a leading authority on this area of functional analysis—to the extent that Dieudonné compares his impact in this field to that of Banach.