1972 deaths

Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmʌurɪt͡s kɔrˈneːlɪs ˈɛʃər]; 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were inspired by mathematics.
Despite wide popular interest, for most of his life Escher was 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 around the world.
His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher believed he had no mathematical ability, he interacted with the mathematicians George Pólya, Roger Penrose, and Donald Coxeter, and the crystallographer Friedrich Haag, and conducted his own research into tessellation.
Early in his career, he drew inspiration from nature, making studies of insects, landscapes, and plants such as lichens, all of which he used as details in his artworks. He traveled in Italy and Spain, sketching buildings, townscapes, architecture and the tilings of the Alhambra and the Mezquita of Cordoba, and became steadily more interested in their mathematical structure.
Escher's art became well known among scientists and mathematicians, and in popular culture, especially after it was featured by Martin Gardner in his April 1966 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Apart from being used in a variety of technical papers, his work has appeared on the covers of many books and albums. He was one of the major inspirations for Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

Karl Søren Clausen (15 August 1904 – 5 December 1972) was a Danish pianist, conductor, composer and musicologist. In addition to his work as a high school teacher in German and Music, he composed several instrumental and choral works, as well as songs. He became increasingly involved in work with amateur choirs and school singing, and he became a very popular choir conductor, who led several choirs to many musical successes, often with his own choir arrangements, based on folk melodies.
The strong folk singing tradition that he experienced in his childhood Sønderjylland under German rule became decisively influential during his later career. In the late 1940s he began collecting sound recordings of folk singing in marginal, rural areas of Jylland, and in the 1960s he continued this work in the isolated Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. Alongside teaching and collection work, Clausen also began studying the history of Danish and North German folk singing, and put folk singing into a new context, incorporating historical, religious and sociological aspects, as reflected in various articles, as well as a textbook.

David Ross Lauder VC (31 January 1894 – 4 June 1972) was a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Anthony Gruszka was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly.

Anita Ruth Greve (5 August 1905 – 19 September 1972) was a Norwegian painter.
She was born in Kristiania as a daughter of Bredo Greve (1871–1931) and Finnish citizen Esther Hougberg (1878–1939). She was a niece of Ulrikke Greve.She studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts from 1935 to 1936 and 1938 to 1940, and her solo debut exhibition came at Kunstnerforbundet in 1946. She also took part in Høstutstillingen twenty-five times, and was represented in collective exhibitions in other Nordic countries.During the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany Greve was imprisoned in Grini concentration camp from June 1942 to the war's end in May 1945.

Dorothy Ziegler (July 20, 1922 – March 1, 1972) was an American musician, a trombonist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. She also taught piano at St. Louis Institute of Music, and conducted operas.

Lester Barber Stevens (February 28, 1884, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – January 1972, in Waukesha, Wisconsin) was an American athlete. He competed at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. In the 100 meters, Stevens won his first round heat with a time of 11.2 seconds to advance to the semifinals. There, he placed fourth in his race and did not advance to the final.

Beatrice Helen Worsley (18 October 1921 – 8 May 1972) was the first female Canadian computer scientist. She received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge with Maurice Wilkes as adviser, the first Ph.D. granted in what would today be known as computer science. She wrote the first program to run on EDSAC, co-wrote the first compiler for Toronto's Ferranti Mark 1, wrote numerous papers in computer science, and taught computers and engineering at Queen's University and the University of Toronto for over 20 years before her death at the age of 50.

Ellen Schwanneke (1906–1972) was a German dancer and stage and film actress.She was the daughter of stage and film actor Viktor Schwanneke.

Maiola Kalili (November 3, 1909 – August 23, 1972) was an American competition swimmer who represented the United States at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. Kailili received a silver medal as a member of the second-place U.S. team in the men's 4×200-meter freestyle relay, together with teammates Frank Booth, George Fissler and Manuella Kalili, who was also his younger brother.