The son of the radical Protestant theologian Gustav Wislicenus, Johannes was born on 24 June 1835 in Kleineichstedt (now part of Querfurt, Saxony-Anhalt) in Prussian Saxony, and entered University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1853. In October 1853 he immigrated to the United States with his family. For a brief time he acted as assistant to Harvard chemist Eben Horsford, and in 1855 was appointed lecturer at the Mechanics' Institute in New York. Returning to Europe in 1856, he continued to study chemistry with Wilhelm Heinrich Heintz at the University of Halle. In 1860, he began lecturing  at the University of Zürich, and at the Swiss Polytechnical Institute and by 1868 he was Professor of Chemistry at the university. In 1870, he was chosen to succeed Georg Staedeler as Professor of General Chemistry at the Swiss Polytechnical Institute in Zürich, retaining also the position of full professor at the University of Zürich. In 1872, he succeeded Adolph Strecker in the chair of chemistry at University of Würzburg, and in 1885, he succeeded Hermann Kolbe as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Leipzig, where he died on 6 December 1902.