List of Famous people who died in 1972

Edward VIII was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication in December of the same year.

John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI's predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Hoover is also credited with establishing and expanding a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List, renamed in 2001 as the Terrorist Screening Database which the FBI still compiles and manages.

Marcel Moore, born Suzanne Alberte Malherbe, was a French illustrator, designer, and photographer. She, along with her romantic and creative partner Claude Cahun, was a surrealist writer and photographer.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, they heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States from 1945 to 1953, succeeding upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt after serving as the 34th vice president. He implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, and established the Truman Doctrine and NATO.

Ip Man, also known as Yip Man, was a Chinese martial artist and a grandmaster of the martial art Wing Chun. He had several students who later became martial arts masters in their own right, the most famous among them being Bruce Lee.

Gilbert Ray Hodges, ne Hodge was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) first baseman and manager who played most of his 18-year career for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. He was inducted into the New York Mets Hall of Fame in 1982.

Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker was a Puerto Rican professional baseball right fielder who played 18 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, becoming both the first Latin American and Caribbean player to be enshrined. His untimely death established the precedent that, as an alternative to the five-year retirement period, a player who has been deceased for at least six months is eligible for entry into the Hall of Fame.

Prithviraj Kapoor was a pioneer of Indian theatre and of the Hindi film industry, who started his career as an actor in the silent era of Hindi cinema, associated with IPTA as one of its founding members and who founded the Prithvi Theatres, a travelling theatre company based in Mumbai, in 1944. He was the patriarch of the Kapoor family of Hindi films, four generations of which, beginning with him, have played active roles in the Hindi film industry, with two generations still active in Bollywood. He's also acted in a Kannada movie Sākshatkāra. However, his father, Basheshwar Nath Kapoor, also played a short role in his movie Awara. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan in 1969 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1971 for his contributions towards Indian cinema.

Joseph Gallo, also known as "Crazy Joe", was an Italian-American mobster of the Colombo crime family of New York City.