List of Famous people who died at 72

Jack Morris Rosenthal was an English playwright who wrote 129 early episodes of the ITV soap opera Coronation Street and over 150 screenplays, including original TV plays, feature films, and adaptations. A street in Manchester is named after him, appropriately next to a centre of contemporary art, theatre and film that opened in 2015, HOME.

Ulf Henrik Palme was a Swedish film actor. He was born in Stockholm and died in Ingarö.

Prince Alexander Nikitich Romanov was a member of the Romanov family. He was a son of Prince Nikita Alexandrovich of Russia and a great nephew of Nicholas II of Russia, the last Tsar.

Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh was a Russian-born Soviet astronomer and discoverer of minor planets and comets at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnyy, Crimea.

Władysław Hańcza (1905–1977) was a Polish actor and theatre director. During World War II he joined an underground theater. After the war he was a lecturer at the State Theatre Academy in Warsaw.

Kirsten Johanne Holst Høybye was a Danish author, best remembered for her book Min ven Thomas (1987).

Jacqueline Lichtenstein was a French philosopher, art historian, and professor of aesthetics and the philosophy of art at the University of Paris IV - Paris-Sorbonne.