List of Famous people who died at 72

Reuben Louis Goodstein was an English mathematician with a strong interest in the philosophy and teaching of mathematics.

Carl Jaffe was a German actor. Jaffe trained on the stage in his native Hamburg, Kassel and Wiesbaden before moving to Berlin, where his career began to develop.

Walter A. Thompson was an American film editor with 69 film credits from 1930 to 1975. He was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for This Above All (1942) and for The Nun's Story (1959). He was also nominated for an ACE Eddie Award for The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962).

Szabolcs Fazakas was a Hungarian politician and diplomat.

Glyn Edmund Daniel was a Welsh scientist and archaeologist who taught at Cambridge University, where he specialised in the European Neolithic period. He was appointed Disney Professor of Archaeology in 1974 and edited the academic journal Antiquity from 1958 to 1985. In addition to early efforts to popularise archaeological study and antiquity on radio and television, he edited several popular studies of the fields. He also published mysteries under the pseudonym Dilwyn Rees.