On Wednesday, the Massachusetts General Hospital was donated $100 million to create an institute that will search for vaccines for AIDS and other infectious diseases.

 

The donation was a gift from Phillip Ragon, 59, who is a founder and sole owner of InterSystems Corp., a Cambridge company that provides database software to hospitals and other industries.

 

The main goal of the new center, named after Mr. Ragon and his wife (The Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Institute), will be finding an effective vaccine against AIDS.

 

The institute will bring scientists, clinicians and engineers together from the Massachusetts Hospital, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who will give their best to find solutions for a wide range of infectious diseases and cancers.

 

The institute will be led by by Dr. Bruce Walker, an MGH researcher and physician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

The $100 million donation, the largest donation ever received by the hospital, will be split in equal amounts over the next ten years.

 

Mr. Ragon decided to create the institute after a visit in South Africa, which is currently experiencing one of the most severe AIDS epidemics in the world. At the end of 2007, there were approximately 5.7 million people living with HIV in South Africa. There are many possible reasons why South Africa has been so badly affected by AIDS, including poverty, social instability and a lack of government action.

 

 “For us, it was just an incredible opportunity to participate in something that, if we’re successful, will save millions of lives, and sure the ill, and cure whole communities,” Mr. Ragon said.