List of Famous people who died at 72

Erik Asklund, born 20 June 1908 in Södermalm, Stockholm, died 6 November 1980 in Stockholm, was a Swedish writer.

Felix Manthey was a German racing cyclist. He won the German National Road Race in 1928. He also rode in the 1930 Tour de France.

Jammaz bin Abdullah Al-Suhaimi was a Saudi businessman and former chairman of the Capital Markets Authority of Saudi Arabia. His obituary in Euromoney described him as "a hugely influential and visionary figure in the development of the Saudi financial markets".

Heinrich Mückter was a Nazi doctor, pharmacologist and chemist. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, Mückter was deputy director of the Kraków Institute for Typhus and Virus Research. Mückter and his colleagues repeatedly experimented on concentration camp prisoners in Buchenwald. Many prisoners died as a result of the experiments.

Ronald Welch was the pseudonym of Welsh writer Ronald Oliver Felton TD, who wrote in English. He is best known for children's historical fiction. He won the 1956 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association for the year's best children's book by a British author, for Knight Crusader, the first in his so-called Carey Family series of novels. He was born in Aberavon, West Glamorgan. He was teaching at Bedford Modern School when the Second World War broke out. In 1940 he was commissioned lieutenant in the Welch Regiment, to which his pen name refers. He reached the rank of major and stayed in the Territorial Army after the war. He was for many years headmaster of Okehampton Grammar School in Devon.