Junes Ipaktschi grew up in Tehran / Iran. After graduation in June 1958 at the Razi School in Tehran, he studied chemistry from 1958 to 1966 at the Heidelberg University. His doctoral thesis dealt with the field of Organic Chemistry under the direction of Heinz Staab. He then conducted research as an assistant in the same working group and habilitated in 1972 for the Organic Chemistry with a thesis on the photochemistry of unsaturated ketones. From 1972 to 1974 he did research as a postdoctoral fellow and visiting professor in the laboratory of William G. Dauben at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1973 he accepted an appointment at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Marburg and became a professor.
In 1975 he was at the chemical Institute of Arya Mehr University (now Sharif University) appointed to Tehran and joined as a professor in his native country, Iran. In 1978 he moved to the newly founded Reza Shah Kabir University (now Mazandaran University) and worked there as a professor for chemistry. He was for a time as director of the University and also head of the Chemical Institute operates. From 1980 until retirement, in 2005, he was professor of chemistry at the University of Giessen. 1992–1995 he was dean of the chemistry department of the University and 2001–2002 executive director of the Organic Chemical Institute there. In addition to several visits as a visiting professor at various universities in Iran, he was invited in 2001 as a visiting professor at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba / Japan and spent three months there. In 1999, Ipaktschi was awarded the Kharazmi Award.