John Phillips was born on December 25, 1800, in Marden, Wiltshire, England.

He was an English geologist and author. He was orphaned at the age of seven, and his custody was assumed by his uncle William Smith (1769-1839), a renowned English geologist and surveyor. Phillips attended various schools and helped his uncle with his geological research and writing. In 1815, he began to work as his assistant travelling the country with him on pioneering geological field trips. In 1831, he served as both Keeper and Secretary of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. He was appointed as the first secretary of the newly formed British Association for the Advancement of Science (1832-1863) and President in 1865. In 1834, he was appointed Professor of Geology at the University of Dublin and was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London. In 1834, Phillips was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1841, he published the first global geologic time scale based on the correlation of fossils in rock strata and he identified and named the major geological eras Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Caenozoic. In 1856, he became Professor of Geology at Oxford and was elected as President of the Geological Society of London. Phillips was a prolific academic and popular science author and was also active in the fields of astronomy, electromagnetism, zoology, botany, meteorology, scientific instruments, museum design, and surveying. He received honorary degrees of LL.D. from Dublin and Cambridge and D.C.L. from Oxford. He published "Memoirs of William Smith" (1844).

He died unmarried on April 24, 1874, in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.