List of Famous people who died at 72

Guy Bernardin was a French sailor born in 1945 in Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, Ille-et-Vilaine, and disappeared at sea in August 2017, is a French skipper. He has participated in several offshore races, including two BOC Challenges, the 1989–1990 Vendée Globe and the 1990 Route du Rhum. On October 2, 2017, his 15-metre sailboat Crazy Horse, which he had just acquired, was found empty off Cape Codin the United States. He had left Southporton the East Coast of the United States on 9 August for La Turballe and had not given any sign of life since 15 August.

William Saroyan was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment, he turned it into a novel, The Human Comedy.