He was the first professor of physics at Mason Science College from 1880 to 1900, and then the successor institution, the University of Birmingham until his death.

He was born at the parsonage of the Monton Unitarian Chapel in Eccles, Lancashire, where his father served as minister from 1846 to 1878.

From 1867 to 1872, he attended Owens College, now the University of Manchester, where his physics teachers included Osborne Reynolds and Balfour Stewart.

From 1872 to 1876 he was a student at the University of Cambridge, where he attained high honours in mathematics after taking grinds with Edward Routh.

Poynting and the Nobel prizewinner J. J. Thomson co-authored a multi-volume undergraduate physics textbook, which was in print for about 50 years and was in widespread use during the first third of the 20th century.

He is credited with coining the expression "greenhouse effect" in 1909 to explain how infrared-absorbing trace gasses such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the surface temperature of Earth and Mars.