[7] LIF is an extremely sensitive technique with applications ranging from analytical chemistry and molecular biology to astrophysics.

Zare completed his PhD thesis, a theoretical analysis of Molecular fluorescence and photodissociation,[11] with Herschbach at Harvard in 1964.

From 1966 to 1969, he was jointly appointed in the departments of chemistry, physics and astrophysics at JILA at the University of Colorado Boulder.

[8] Zare is well known for his research in laser chemistry, particularly the development of laser-induced fluorescence, which he has used to study reaction dynamics and analytical detection methods.

[1] His research on the spectroscopy of chemical compounds suggested a new mechanism for energy transference in inelastic collisions.

[24] Zare and his students have also developed cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) for quantitative diagnosis,[25] and for high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)[26] Zare is also involved in the development of desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) techniques, which are being used for mass spectrometric imaging of lipids, metabolites and proteins in tissue samples, including prostate cancer.

[30][31] He is one of the co-authors of a paper that appeared in Science in 1996, raising the possibility that a meteorite from Mars, ALH84001, contained traces of Martian life.

[32] Zare used two-step laser mass spectrometry (L2MS), a technique that is particularly sensitive to organic molecules, to examine samples from the interior of the meteorite.