Rogozov Leonid Ivanovich

A surgeon, participant of the 6th Soviet Antarctic Expedition, who in 1961 performed an operation for appendicitis on himself. He had been working at a station in Antarctica for a year before he felt symptoms of the disease. He understood that there were no doctors at the station except himself, and without an immediate operation, he would die. He performed an operation on himself with two assistants. One of them gave him tools and the other held mirrors and light. The operation took three hours, but he did not give up and did it and it saved his life.

'Justified' is a word in the past tense. That means that it is used to refer to events from the past. The infinitive form of 'justified' is 'justify'. To justify is to show to others that something that was done was right, that it was reasonable, given the situation. It almost brings to mind the need to defend one's decisions when one's motives are put into question. For example: 'Joe's decision to move out of London was justified.' This sentence shows us that the speaker thinks that Joe's decision to move out of London was wise. He agrees with Joe and if the speaker was in the same situation, they would probably do the same. The word 'justified', however, gives this sentence a definitive tone. Using 'justified' implies that what Joe did was most certainly right and correct, and that his motives for moving out of London are absolutely valid. It is as if a group of judges met and discussed what Joe did, and they decided that his decision was 'justified', that Joe had good reasons to decide to move out and what Joe did was absolutely right, and what he did never has to be discussed again. 'Justifiable' though, has a bit of a different meaning. 'Joe's decision to move out of London was justifiable'. A synonym for the word 'justifiable' is 'understandable'. 'Justifiable' means that if something was to be called into question, like someone's motives or actions, it would turn out to be justified. Using the example from the previous paragraph, if 'Joe's decision to move out of London was justifiable', then the judges haven't yet met to assess Joe's actions, but if they did, they would find that Joe had valid reasons for doing what he did. So 'justifiable' is less definite and not as strong as 'justified'.