Eli Solomon Jacobs (born October 5, 1937) is an American financier and attorney, member of the National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office and the former owner of the Baltimore Orioles from 1989 to 1993.

Jacobs was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 5, 1937, and raised in nearby Newton. After graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, he attended Yale University, where he served as managing editor of the school's Daily News. Once he completed his undergraduate studies in 1959, he served a two-year stint in the United States Army stationed at Fort Holabird in Baltimore, Maryland. Following the military, he returned to Yale, earning a law degree in 1964. His career began immediately at the Wall Street investment banking establishment White Weld & Co., where he became one of its youngest partners by 1968. After his departure from the firm in 1970, he spent more than a decade as a stock market investor and venture capitalist.

During the 1980s, he dove headfirst into the leveraged buyout boom. After establishing his own firm, Manhattan-based E.S. Jacobs & Co., in 1986, he began to build up a vast investment portfolio which included controlling interest in Memorex and Triangle Pacific Corp., a maker of cabinets and wood flooring. His biggest coup, executed in December, 1987, was a $900 million acquisition of Telex Corp., which would be merged with Memorex to form, at the time, the world's second largest manufacturer of computer peripherals. He also served on the board of directors of Times Mirror Co.

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.