List of Famous people who died in 1972

Paul-Émile Pissarro, also Paulémile Pissarro or Paul Émile Pissarro was a French impressionist and neo-impressionist painter. He came from the Pissarro family of artists.

Hedwig Maria Adolphine Gobertina von Trapp was the fifth child of Georg von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp. She was a member of the Trapp Family Singers, whose lives were the inspiration for the play and movie The Sound of Music. She was portrayed as the character "Brigitta".

Nigel McGown Green was an English character actor. Because of his strapping build, commanding height and regimental demeanour he would often be found playing military types and men of action in such classic 1960s films as Jason and the Argonauts, Zulu, Tobruk and The Ipcress File.

Akim Mikhailovich Tamiroff was an Armenian-American actor. He was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in The General Died at Dawn (1936) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), and the latter won him the first Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Tamiroff appeared in at least 80 American motion pictures in a career spanning thirty-seven years.

Kurt Hiller was a Jewish German essayist of high stylistic originality and a political journalist from a Jewish family. An openly gay communist he was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, despising the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel, which made him quite unpopular with Marxists. Hiller was also an influential writer in the early German gay rights movement in the first two decades of the 20th century. In 1929, Hiller took over as chairman of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee from fellow gay activist Magnus Hirschfeld.

Johann Leopold, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the eldest son of Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and Princess Victoria Adelaide of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.

Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen was the eldest child of Prince Friedrich Johann of Saxe-Meiningen, a younger son of Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and Countess Adelaide of Lippe-Biesterfeld, a daughter of Ernst, Count of Lippe-Biesterfeld. By marriage, she was known as Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

Lionel Sharples Penrose, FRS was an English psychiatrist, medical geneticist, paediatrician, mathematician and chess theorist, who carried out pioneering work on the genetics of intellectual disability. Penrose was the Galton professor of eugenics (1945–1965), then professor of human genetics (1963–1965) at University College London, and later emeritus professor.

Xavier Vallat, French politician and anti-semite who was Commissioner-General for Jewish Questions in the wartime Vichy collaborationist government, and was sentenced after World War II to ten years in prison for his part in the persecution of French Jews.

Yossef Romano was a Libyan-born Israeli weightlifter with the Israeli team that went to the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany. He was the second of eleven Israeli team members killed in the Munich massacre by Palestinian members of Black September during that Olympics. He was the Israeli weight-lifting champion in the light and middle-weight divisions for nine years.