John Suppe has been a distinguished professor at the University of Houston since 2016. He grew up in Los Angeles, graduating from University of California, Riverside in geology in 1965 and a doctorate from Yale in 1969. He joined the faculty at Princeton in 1971, was named Blair Professor of Geology in 1988 and served as department chair. During his time at Princeton, Suppe was a visiting professor at National Taiwan University (twice), Caltech (twice), University of Barcelona, Nanjing University, and Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. In 2007, he moved to Taipei and joined National Taiwan University as Distinguished Chair Research Professor.

Suppe and his former students have made key contributions to fault-related folding, growth strata, mechanics of thrust belts, pore-fluid pressures, and state of stress in cooperation with numerous petroleum companies, including Arco, Texaco, Chevron, CPC (Taiwan), and PetroChina.

Suppe's work is highly cited and recognized through numerous honors and awards. He was elected Member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1995 and Fellow of the AGU in 2021. He received an unprecedented two Best Paper Awards and a career contribution award in Structural Geology and Tectonics from the GSA, the PSGD-AAPG Seminal Paper Award and the AAPG Robert H. Dott, Sr. Memorial Award. 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 for distinguished alumni from Yale University, and the State of Texas Governor's GURI Award.