Richard Matthias Jakoby (11 September 1929 – 9 July 2017) was a German music teacher and cultural manager and until 1993 director of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover.
During the Second World War he was a student in the medical service and for a short time he was called up for the Volkssturm to dig tank trenches.
From 1946 he attended the Cusanus-Gymnasium in Wittlich with the Abitur in 1949, after which he studied Romance languages and literature, musicology and music education and philosophy in Mainz.
In 1964 he became full professor of musicology and music education at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hannover, became director of its predecessor institute (the Musikhochschule) in 1968 and founding president of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in 1979, a position he held until his retirement in 1993.
He received the Lower Saxony Prize for Culture, the Deutscher Musikpreis, the Plaque of Honour of the City of Hanover and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.