James Loeb (/loʊb/;[3] German: [løːp]; August 6, 1867 – May 27, 1933) was an American banker, Hellenist and philanthropist.

He assembled a team of Anglo-American classicists to oversee the series, and arranged for publication through Heinemann (publisher) in London[6] When James Loeb died, he bequeathed the Loeb Classical Library and funds to Harvard University to establish The Loeb Classical Library Foundation and to support research in the classics.

That year he also turned over his collection of Arretine pottery to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.

[1] Nevertheless, presumably unknown to Loeb, Kraepelin held racist views about Jews, and his student who took over the Institute, Ernst Rudin, was a leading advocate of racial hygiene and forced sterilization or killing of psychiatric inpatients for which he was personally honoured by Adolf Hitler.

[8] Loeb's correspondence with Aby Warburg has been characterized as creating a Renaissance of relationships of the European to classical antiquity.