In 1892, he worked as the director of the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional (National Astronomical Observatory).

His investigative works had been published in Los Anales de Ingeniería (The Annals of Engineering) since 1890, seven years before he took over editing the publication.

During the Thousand Days War, Garavito was part of a secret scientific society called El Círculo de los Nueve Puntos (the nine-point circle), where the condition for admission was to solve a problem about Euler's theorem.

With this objective, he gave lectures and conferences in economics and the human factors which affected it, such as war or overpopulation.

He was later the director of the Chorographic Commission, created with the objectives of developing the Colombian railways and defining the frontier with Venezuela.