Quadratic forms and finite groups

The study of quadratic forms is a classical and important topic of algebra and number theory. A natural example is the trace form of a finite Galois extension. This form has the additional property of being invariant under the Galois group,leading to the notion of "self-dual nornal basis", introduced by Lenstra. The aim of this talk is to give a survey of this area, and to present some recent joint results with Parimala and Serre.