His mother was Elizabeth Rolle Balmer, and he was the oldest son.

During his schooling he excelled in mathematics, and so decided to focus on that field when he attended university.

Johann then spent his entire life in Basel, where he taught at a school for girls.

Despite being a mathematician, Balmer is best remembered for his work on spectral series.

His major contribution (made at the age of sixty, in 1885) was an empirical formula for the visible spectral lines of the hydrogen atom, the study of which he took up at the suggestion of Eduard Hagenbach also of Basel.

[1][2] Using Ångström's measurements of the hydrogen lines, he arrived at a formula for computing the wavelength as follows: for m = 2 and n = 3, 4, 5, 6, and so forth; h = 3.6456 · 10−7 m = 364.56 nm.

Hagenbach informed Balmer that Ångström had observed a line with wavelength 397 nm.

This portion of the Hydrogen emission spectrum, from transitions in electron energy levels with n ≥ 3 to n = 2, became known as the Balmer series.

Two of Balmer's colleagues, Hermann Wilhelm Vogel and William Huggins, were able to confirm the existence of other lines of the Balmer series in the spectrum of hydrogen in white stars.