1872 births

Henri-Jacques-Edouard Evenepoel (3 October 1872 in Nice – 27 December 1899 in Paris) was a French-born Belgian artist whose most important works are associated with Fauvism.

Mikhail Semyonovich Tsvet, also spelt Tsvett, Tswett, Tswet, Zwet, and Cvet (Russian: Михаил Семёнович Цвет; 14 May 1872 – 26 June 1919) was a Russian-Italian botanist who invented chromatography. His last name is Russian for "colour" and is also the root word of "flower."

Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger (b. Boulogne-Billancourt, France, June 7, 1872; d. Tunis, October 29, 1932) was a French painter and musicologist, specializing in North African and Arabic music.

Alice Salomon (19 April 1872 – 30 August 1948) was a German social reformer and pioneer of social work as an academic discipline. Her role was so important to German social work that the Deutsche Bundespost (German post office) issued a commemorative postage stamp about her in 1989. A university, a park and a square in Berlin are all named after her.

Jules-Jean-Paul Fort (1 February 1872 – 20 April 1960) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. At the age of 18, reacting against the Naturalistic theatre, Fort founded the Théâtre d'Art (1890–93). He also founded and edited the literary reviews Livre d'Art with Alfred Jarry and Vers et Prose (1905–14) with poet Guillaume Apollinaire, which published the work of Paul Valéry and other important Symbolist writers. Fort is notable for his enormous volume of poetry, having published more than thirty volumes of ballads and, according to Amy Lowell, for creating the polyphonic prose form in his 'Ballades francaises'.

Paul Léautaud (18 January 1872 – 22 February 1956) was a French writer and theater critic for Mercure de France, signing his often caustic reviews with the pseudonym Maurice Boissard.

Jean-Marie Camille Guérin (French: [ɡeʁɛ̃]; 22 December 1872 – 9 June 1961) was a French veterinarian, bacteriologist and immunologist who, together with Albert Calmette, developed the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), a vaccine for immunization against tuberculosis.

Félix-Henri "Henry" Bataille (4 April 1872, in Nîmes – 2 March 1922, in Rueil-Malmaison) was a French dramatist and poet. His works were popular between 1900 and the start of World War I.
Bataille's parents died when he was young. He attended the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Julian to study painting, but started writing when he was 14. Henry wrote plays and poems, but after the success of his second play, La Lépreuse, he became a playwright exclusively. Bataille's early works explored the effects of passion on human motivation and how stifling the social conventions of the times could be. For example, Maman Colibri, is about a middle-aged woman's affair with a younger man. Later, Bataille would gravitate towards the theatre of ideas and social drama.
Bataille was also a theorist of subconscious motivation. While he did not use his theories in most of his own works, he influenced later playwrights such as Jean-Jacques Bernard and the "school of silence".

Paul Henri Büsser (16 January 1872 – 30 December 1973) was a French classical composer, organist, conductor and teacher. Among his teachers were César Franck, Charles Gounod and Jules Massenet. In addition to his own compositions Büsser edited and orchestrated a wide range of music – mostly but not exclusively French – dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries. He was at various times in his career the conductor of the Paris Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, and professor of composition at the Conservatoire de Paris.