List of Famous people who died in 1972

Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the mother of the current King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf. A member of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Sibylla became a Swedish princess by marrying Prince Gustaf Adolf, Duke of Västerbotten, who did not live to ascend the Swedish throne.

Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi was an Austrian-Japanese politician, philosopher and Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi. A pioneer of European integration, he served as the founding president of the Paneuropean Union for 49 years. His parents were Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austro-Hungarian diplomat, and Mitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an oil merchant, antiques-dealer and major landowner in Tokyo. His childhood name in Japan was Aoyama Eijiro. He became a Czechoslovak citizen in 1919 and then took French nationality from 1939 until his death.

Konrad Grebe was a German mining engineer and inventor.

Maurits Cornelis Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Despite wide popular interest, Escher was for long somewhat neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions across the world.

Maria Goeppert Mayer was a German-born American theoretical physicist, and Nobel laureate in Physics for proposing the nuclear shell model of the atomic nucleus. She was the second woman to win a Nobel Prize in physics, the first being Marie Curie. In 1986, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award for early-career women physicists was established in her honor.

Şükriye Sultan was an Ottoman princess, the daughter of heir to the throne Şehzade Yusuf Izzeddin, son of Sultan Abdulaziz, and Leman Hanım.

Frederick IX was King of Denmark from 1947 to 1972.

Viktor Ivanovich Chistyakov - Soviet actor and parodist. One of the first masters parody of the Soviet Union, achieved star status.

Julius Ansco Bruinier was a musician in the Berlin Jazz / Dance music band, known as the Weintraub's Syncopators. During the 1920s he played the trumpet in the band, but the only instrument in which he had received formal training was the 'cello, and on occasion he played fluently any one of a range of other instruments. He was an engineer by profession.

Max Aub Mohrenwitz was a Mexican-Spanish experimentalist novelist, playwright and literary critic. In 1965 he founded the literary periodical Los Sesenta, with editors that included the poets Jorge Guillén and Rafael Alberti.