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American Mathematical Society lists 25 according to one of the comments in the thread below:

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/207477/john-nashs-mathematical-legacy.

However, as indicated in the thread, a user indicated that almost half of these are reprints. Wikipedia.org gives the number as 21. Also in the above thread one of the authors list 13 as the answer to the question. Who's right?

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    $\begingroup$ Including reprints, MathSciNet lists 26 publications. Omitting reprints and retrospectives, I got: 14 before 1966, and 6 since 1996. Total 20. $\endgroup$
    – Gerald Edgar
    Dec 2, 2015 at 17:29

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Mathscinet database gives all his publications and publications related to him personally. Total is 54. If one removes reprints, translations and publications about him, 14 or 15 original papers remain.

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  • $\begingroup$ I don't have mathscinet, as I'm an independent researcher. However, all the answers given have contradicted one another. Thanks for the information. $\endgroup$
    – Paul Burchett
    Dec 2, 2015 at 23:30
  • $\begingroup$ They do not really contradict. The descrepancy comes from a different count of "original publications". This is not really well defined. $\endgroup$
    – Alexandre Eremenko
    Dec 3, 2015 at 0:11
  • $\begingroup$ Perhaps better stated would be the number of papers that contain new mathematics and that aren't reprints of some earlier result. By new mathematics, I mean proving something new, or even finding a different but significant way of proving something already known. $\endgroup$
    – Paul Burchett
    Dec 3, 2015 at 1:58
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    $\begingroup$ Even if someone has nothing else to do, and will read all his papers, to determine how many satisfy your criteria, the answers obtained by different readers will disagree. $\endgroup$
    – Alexandre Eremenko
    Dec 3, 2015 at 13:40
  • $\begingroup$ I only mean non-redundant ones, and those inside the fields of mathematics and/or the sciences (social science or not). So examples of those excluded things would be biographies, reprints of previous results, etc. I think you nearly answered the question by taking out the reprints, however, you stated it was 14 or 15. Do you happen to know which? While the question might seem odd, note I do know that this number was a poor judge of Nash's mathematical genius - not that I could make informed comments in all of the appropriate fields, but I can comment on enough to make the statement! $\endgroup$
    – Paul Burchett
    Dec 5, 2015 at 8:01

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