AIDS researchers hailed a $100 million gift from a Cambridge technology magnate that will create an institute to jumpstart the search for an HIV vaccine. The gift from Phillip Ragon who pledged the money Wednesday to Massachusetts General Hospital to create an institute that will search for vaccines for AIDS and other infectious diseases as well.

The 59-year-old Ragon is the founder and sole owner of InterSystems Corp., a Cambridge company that provides database software to hospitals and other industries.

The hospital will get $10 million a year for the next decade to bring together doctors, engineers and biologists from Massachusetts General as well as other research institutions, including Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bruce Walker, a leading AIDS researcher at Massachusetts General, will serve as the Ragon Institute’s director. Walker is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also has been the director of the Partners AIDS Research Center, which will now become part of the Ragon Institute.
The initial work of the institute will focus on identifying the effective immune responses in a small group of people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, who are able to keep their virus in check without medications. It will work to design strategies to reproduce those responses.

“This institute will let top researchers from some of the best institutions in the world apply their full creative potential to problems of tremendous global importance,” Walker said.

Harvard President Drew Faust declared that the opening of the institute is akin to the Apollo missions to the moon. It was clear from the tenor of her remarks, and those from MIT President Susan Hockfield, that the announcement of such a generous gift afforded welcome respite from news of shrinking endowments and broke donors.