List of Famous people who died at 72

Joseph "Dandy" Don Meredith was an American football quarterback, sports commentator and actor. He spent all nine seasons of his professional playing career (1960–1968) with the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League (NFL). He was named to the Pro Bowl in each of his last three years as a player. He subsequently became a color analyst for NFL telecasts from 1970–1984. As an original member of the Monday Night Football broadcast team on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), he famously played the role of Howard Cosell's comic foil. Meredith was also an actor who appeared in a dozen films and in seven major television shows, some of which had him as the main starring actor. He is probably familiar to television audiences as Bert Jameson, a recurring role he had in Police Story.

Henry Campbell Liken McCullough was a Northern Irish guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was best known for his work as a member of Spooky Tooth, the Grease Band, and Paul McCartney and Wings. He also performed and recorded as a solo artist and session musician.

James Gordon MacArthur was an American actor best known for the role of Danny "Danno" Williams, the reliable second-in-command of the fictional Hawaiian State Police squad in the long-running television series Hawaii Five-O, and for playing the juvenile lead in a series of Disney movies.

Kim Mellius Flyvholm Larsen was a Danish rock and pop musician. He was a major selling Scandinavian act with over 5 million albums sold.

Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy.

Leonard Ho was a Chinese film producer.

Ignaz Kirchner was a German actor who made a career on German-speaking stages, especially at Vienna's Burgtheater where he played for 30 years. A character actor, he worked with leading stage directors. He often played opposite Gert Voss, both in classical drama such as Shakespeare's Antonio, with Voss as Shylock, and as Jago, with Voss as Othello, and especially in black comedies, such as Goldberg in Tabori's Die Goldberg-Variationen, and in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, Beckett's Endspiel and Genet's Die Zofen. Kirchner and Voss were named Schauspielerpaar des Jahres twice, in 1992 and 1998.

Can Yücel was a Turkish poet noted for his use of colloquial language.

Richard Pierce Havens was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. His music encompassed elements of folk, soul, and rhythm and blues. He had an intense and rhythmic guitar style, and played soulful covers of pop and folk songs. He was the opening act at Woodstock.

Nikolai Paltsev was a Russian politician. A member of United Russia, he served as mayor of Stavropol from 2008 to 2011.