Computational Algebra Seminar: Kasprzyk -- Reflexive polytopes and their role in Mirror Symmetry

Maximilian Kreuzer died on 26th November after many months fighting against a   
severe illness. I want to take this opportunity to talk about one of his most   
important contributions to toric geometry: the classification of the four       
dimensional reflexive polytopes that he produced with Skarke in 2000.           
                                                                                
This classification of 473,800,776 polyhedra provides most famous source of     
Calabi-Yau threefolds (giving 30,108 distinct pairs of Hodge numbers), and is   
obviously of considerable importance in string theory. I'll attempt to sketch   
the methods used by Kreuzer and Skarke to obtain this result, and how the       
combinatorial data should be interpreted.