The Prison Service confirmed the man who became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer died at HMP Full Sutton on Saturday, 34 years into his life sentence.
It is believed he died from natural causes.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Nilsen carried out a murderous spree of near-unparalleled savagery.
He is believed to have killed as many as 15 young men, most of them homeless homosexuals, at his north London home.
After luring his victims to their death, Nilsen would often sit with their corpses for days before dismembering them.
His warped crimes were only detected by chance - when a drain outside his home on Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill, became blocked by the human remains he had tried to flush away.
He was jailed for life with a recommendation he serve a minimum of 25 years in 1983, on six counts of murder and two of attempted murder.
"Homosexual predator Nilsen would often befriend his victims in the pubs and bars of London, before offering to entertain them at his flat.
Once there, many were strangled to death - sometimes after they had lost consciousness - leaving him free to defile their remains.
A grim interview aired in 1993 saw the bespectacled Scottish murderer describe the macabre scenes that followed.
He told an interviewer how he enjoyed caring for the bodies, dressing them and undressing them and recounted in horrific detail how they were then cut up.
While some remains were inexpertly flushed away by Nilsen, others were stored under his floorboards and in cupboards for many months, meaning detectives were greeted with the foetid stench of decay when they first searched his flat.
