OK so I know that pubmed is useful for looking up medical research. Where do I go to find math papers? Other disciplines? I’m specifically trying to find out what a particular math professor has published, but I’m interested in the more general question as well.
Have you tried the obvious? Google Scholar
There’s arXiv, though I’m not sure how widespread submissions are from mathematicians. Virtually all physicists working in areas like particle physics initially release their papers to the world via it, so it works as a pretty comprehensive database of what people have written.
More generally, but not as freely available, there’s the Science Citation Index.
MathSciNet: http://www.ams.org/mathscinet
If you have access to a good college or university library, maybe you could use their databases. The Science Citation Index and a host of others are catalogued through the Web of Science database.
MathSciNet is the real deal. Unfortunately, it is also proprietary; members only can access it. Others, even reviewers like me who worked gratis for them for 40 years, must pay $25/year for an account. The best bet is to go to a major university library that is an institutional member and use one of their computers.
I do not see what they have gained by this policy, since I would be surprised if they have any significant number of people paying their fee and they generate a lot of ill will.