Quadratic and Hermitian Forms Over Rings

This book presents the theory of quadratic and hermitian forms over rings in an algebraic setting. the main features are a detailed study of Clifford algebras, with applications to quadratic forms of low rank, and complete proofs of the stability, cancellation and splitting theorems in unitary K-theory. These theorems are applied to polynomial rings, to give quadratic analogues of the theorem of Quillen and Suslin on projective modules, and to Witt groups of regular rings. The book is addressed to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of algebra, as well as researchers in the field.