Departures of note

In April 1961, Leonid Rogozov, the only doctor at the Soviet Union's Novolazarevskaya Station in Antarctica, developed appendicitis. With the nearest Soviet station over 1,600 kilometers away, no aircraft available, and a blizzard preventing any rescue, he performed an appendectomy on himself. Assisted by a driver and a meteorologist who held a mirror and passed instruments, Rogozov made a 10–12 cm incision under local anesthesia, accidentally cut his cecum and sutured it, then removed his appendix, which he later estimated would have burst within a day. The operation lasted about two hours, and he recovered fully, returning to duty in roughly two weeks.

Rogozov was born in 1934 in a remote Siberian village near the Mongolian and Chinese borders. After his father died in World War II, he completed school in Minusinsk and graduated from the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute in 1959 as a general practitioner. He began surgical training but interrupted it in September 1960 to join the Sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition as the sole medical officer for a team of thirteen researchers. His self-surgery, photographed by colleagues, captured public attention in the Soviet Union and led to mandatory health checks for all personnel on future Antarctic deployments. In 1961, he received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.

After returning to Leningrad in October 1962, Rogozov pursued an MD and in 1966 published a dissertation on esophageal resection for cancer. He worked in several hospitals in the city and from 1986 until 2000 headed the surgery department at the Saint Petersburg Research Institute for Tubercular Pulmonology. He died of lung cancer in Saint Petersburg in 2000, aged 66.