Marc van Leeuwen (Poitiers): Fokko du Cloux' "atlas" software and the recent E_8 computation.

The project "Atlas of Lie groups and Representation" was conceived in 2002 with the goal to implement on computer the state of the art of algorithmic techniques in the theory of real Lie groups and their (infinite dimensional) representations. Fokko du Cloux wrote software to realise a part of this project, culminating for now in a program that can compute Kazhdan-Lusztig-Vogan polynomials for arbitrary real reductive Lie groups. The hardest case of interest was for the split group of type E_8, and it could only be completed after a specific effort to adapt the program to the limitations of available hardware; the successful completion of this computation has been widely publicised. This talk aims at presenting this result and the way in which it was obtained, and the role that Fokko played in achieving it, even if he unfortunately died just months before its completion.