Johan Carl Wilcke (6 September 1732 – 18 April 1796) was a Swedish physicist.

Wilcke was born in Wismar, son of a clergyman who in 1739 was appointed second pastor of the German Church in Stockholm.

He spent the years from 1751 travelling abroad and received the magister degree from the University of Rostock in 1757,[1] after having published the dissertation De electricitatibus contrariis.

In 1759 he became the first "Thamian lecturer" of experimental physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a position created through a donation from the wealthy merchant Sebastian Tham, and a member of the academy.

In 1762 he invented an electrostatic generator that was a first version of the electrophorus, a device named and popularized in 1775 by Alessandro Volta.