Milton Trageser graduated from MIT in 1951. He was appointed project manager of the Apollo program by Charles Stark Draper in 1962 and held the position until 1966. Prior to working on Apollo, Trageser was a part of the guidance, navigation, and control design team for Mars Probe, the results of which laid the groundwork for the Apollo Guidance Computer.
Landing the first man on the moon was no small feat, and Trageser was prolific in both writing and patents during his 38 years at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory and Draper Laboratory. Much of his work centered on inertial and optical instrumentation. After his death in 2000, he was named a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation.