List of Famous people who died at 72

Seth Siegelaub was an American-born art dealer, curator, author and researcher. He is best known for his innovative promotion of conceptual art in New York in the 1960s and '70s, but has also been a political researcher and publisher, textile history bibliographer and collector, and a researcher working on a project on time and causality in physics.

Mervyn "Skip" Williamson was an American underground cartoonist and central figure in the underground comix movement. Williamson's art was published in the National Lampoon, High Times, the Realist, the Industrial Worker, the Chicago Seed, Encyclopædia Britannica and others. His best-known character is Snappy Sammy Smoot.

Simon Vestdijk was a Dutch writer.

Gabriel Ramanantsoa was the President and Prime Minister of Madagascar from 1972 to 1975.

S. Rangarajan, better known by his allonym Sujatha, was an Indian author, novelist and screenwriter who wrote in Tamil. He authored over 100 novels, 250 short stories, ten books on science, ten stage plays, and a slim volume of poems. He was one of the most popular authors in Tamil literature, and a regular contributor to topical columns in Tamil periodicals such as Ananda Vikatan, Kumudam and Kalki. He had a wide readership, and served for a brief period as the editor of Kumudam, and has also written screenplays and dialogues for several Tamil films.