Lectures on formally real fields (Q799734)

In 1974 the notes of these lectures appeared in the series 'Monografias de Matemática' as No.22 published by IMPA (see the preceding review). It seems wise not to make changes in this new edition apart from correcting misprints and a few minor errors: The only change made is to replace the term 'q-ordering' by 'semiordering', since the latter term turned out to be almost exclusively used in the recent literature. For the developments during the last decade in this theory, particularly in the theory of reduced quadratic forms, I would like to refer the reader to two publications of \textit{T. Y. Lam}: his survey article 'The theory of ordered fields' [Lect. Notes Pure Appl. Math. 55, 1-152 (1980; Zbl 0442.12024)] and to his expository notes 'Orderings, valuations and quadratic forms' [Reg. Conf. Ser. Math. 52 (1983; Zbl 0516.12001)].