List of Famous people who are 72

Leslie Terence Owen is an English former footballer who played as a striker. He is the father of former England international striker Michael Owen.

Pradip Krishen, is an Indian filmmaker and environmentalist. He has directed three films, Massey Sahib in 1985, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones in 1989 and Electric Moon for Channel 4, UK in 1991. His films have won significant Indian and international awards, and In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones acquired cult status in the years after it was made. He was married to Arundhati Roy who also acted in his films. He subsequently gave up filmmaking, and since 1995, has worked as a naturalist and environmentalist.

Kurt Mehlhorn is a German theoretical computer scientist. He has been a vice president of the Max Planck Society and is director of the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science.

Carlos da Silva Costa is a Portuguese economist who served as Governor of the Bank of Portugal from June 7, 2010 to July 20, 2020, when he was succeeded by Mário Centeno.

Federico Capasso, a prominent applied physicist, was one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University. He has co-authored over 450 papers, edited four volumes, and holds over 60 US patents.