She has patented devices to enhance optical communications including lasers, waveguides, and detectors.
Garmire was an Optical Society (OSA) board member from 1983-1985 and was elected vice president in 1991.
Early in her life, Garmire's family moved a lot as, despite having a PhD in chemistry, her father spent years finding a well-paying job during the Great Depression.
[3][4] After Radcliffe, she received her PhD in physics at MIT in 1965, where she was assigned to assist Professor Charles Townes, the 1964 Nobel laureate and inventor of the laser.
"[3][4][5] During her PhD, Garmire demonstrated important nonlinear effects produced by powerful laser beams acting on atoms and molecules.
Garmire spent her early career at California Institute of Technology as a senior research fellow.
In 1995, after 20 years at USC, Garmire moved to Dartmouth College where she served as dean of the Thayer School of Engineering.
[7] However, Garmire served as dean for only two years before returning to a faculty member position, as she preferred to stay in research.
She has been a Fulbright senior lecturer and a visiting faculty member in Japan, Australia, Germany, and China.
[8] Garmire was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989 for contributions to nonlinear optics and optoelectronics and for leadership in education.
These diffused the coherent light into abstract shapes with pure colors, internal diffraction pattern texture, and a shimmering speckle.
In November 1970 filmmakers Ivan Dryer and Dale Pelton visited Garmire's lab, filmed the moving patterns and set them to music.
[10] The resulting short movie, LaserImage,[11] dissatisfied both Dryer and Garmire as it lacked the vibrant colors and speckle of live laser light.
In December 1970, they proposed to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles to present a live laser show in the planetarium, to be called Laserium.
Elsa Garmire retired from her job as the Sydney E. Junkins 1887 Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth in 2016.
Interview of Elsa Garmire by Joan Bromberg on 1985 February 4, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA, www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4621 Retrieved 2023-06-20.