John Suppe has been Distinguished Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at University of Houston since 2016. He attended Yale University for graduate school and earned a Ph.D. in 1969 in structural geology, after which he was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1969 to 1971. He joined the faculty at Princeton University in 1971 and was named Blair Professor of Geology in 1988. Suppe served as department chair from 1991 to 1994. During his time at Princeton, Suppe was a visiting professor at National Taiwan University (twice), California Institute of Technology (twice), University of Barcelona, and Ludwig Maximillians University in Munich. He is Concurrent Professor of Nanjing University. In 2007 John moved to Taipei and joined National Taiwan University, as Distinguished Chair Professor.
He is an author or editor of eight books and professional volumes, including Principles of Structural Geology. He was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1995. He received two Best Publication Awards and a Career Contribution Award from the Structural Geology and Tectonics Division of Geological Society of America, the PSGD-AAPG Seminal Paper Award, the Robert H. Dott Sr. Memorial Award of the AAPG and has been an AAPG Distinguished Lecturer. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union. He was named Highly Cited Researcher by Science Citation Index (SCI). He was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Guest Investigator for the NASA Magellan mission to Venus. He received the Research Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal from Yale University, and the State of Texas Governors GURI Award.