People who died at the age of 72

• Algernon Charles Swinburne
• Carl Frederik Tietgen
• George Goyder
• Gustave Moreau
• Matilda Joslyn Gage
• George Bruce Malleson
• John Couch Adams
• Walt Whitman
• Charles Goodyear (US politician)
• Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany
• Mirza Ghalib
• Carl Loewe
• Giacomo Meyerbeer
• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Auguste de Montferrand
• John McLoughlin
• Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville
• John Molson
• Charles Manners-Sutton
• William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock