List of Famous people who died at 72

Darlene Conley was an American actress.

F.X. Toole is the pen name of boxing trainer Jerry Boyd. Toole is most noted for writing the collection of short stories Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner, which were adapted into the Oscar-winning movie Million Dollar Baby in 2004. F.X. Toole's posthumous novel Pound for Pound was released in 2006 to rave reviews. Cutman, a one-hour dramatic series set in the world of boxing, drawn from short stories by F.X. Toole, is in development by AMC Television.

Martin Dies Jr. was a Texas politician and a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives. He was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-second and after that to the six succeeding Congresses. In 1944, Dies did not seek renomination to the Seventy-ninth Congress, but was elected to the Eighty-third and to the two succeeding Congresses. Again, he did not seek renomination in 1958 to the Eighty-sixth Congress. In 1941 and 1957, he was twice defeated for the nomination to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. Dies served as the first chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities from 1937 through 1944.

Sir Peter Brian Medawar was a British biologist and writer, whose works on graft rejection and the discovery of acquired immune tolerance were fundamental to the medical practice of tissue and organ transplants. For his scientific works he is regarded as the "father of transplantation". He is remembered for his wit both in person and in popular writings. Famous zoologists such as Richard Dawkins referred to him as "the wittiest of all scientific writers", and Stephen Jay Gould as "the cleverest man I have ever known".

Dr. Praveen Chaudhari was an Indian American physicist who has contributed to the field of material physics. His research focused on structure and properties of amorphous solids, defects in solids, mechanical properties of thin films, superconductivity, quantum transport in disordered systems, liquid crystal alignment on substrates, and the magnetic monopole experiment. He has published numerous papers and filed 22 patents, most notably one for the erasable read-write compact discs which are commonly used to burn music.

August Chełkowski was a prominent Polish physicist and politician.

Mamadou Ouédraogo was a politician in the French Upper Volta.

Vittorio Gorresio was an Italian Journalist-commentator and essayist.