Short answers, pulled from the story.
Henry Bessemer invented a steel-making process that used air blown through molten pig iron to burn off impurities, producing steel without additional fuel. It was the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century and remained in use for almost a hundred years, drastically lowering the cost of steel and enabling it to replace cast iron in railway bridges and other structures.
Henry Bessemer was born on the 19th of January 1813 in Charlton, near Hitchin in Hertfordshire, and died on the 15th of March 1898 at Denmark Hill, London. He is buried at West Norwood cemetery, London SE27.
Robert Forester Mushet, working at Darkhill Ironworks in the Forest of Dean, conducted thousands of experiments and showed that removing almost all carbon from iron and then adding a precise amount of carbon and manganese in the form of spiegeleisen produced consistent, malleable steel. His contribution resolved the quality problems that had prevented ironmasters from using Bessemer's process successfully.
Queen Victoria knighted Bessemer on the 26th of June 1879, and in the same year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He later received honorary membership from the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland in 1891, was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1894, and became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1895.
The SS Bessemer was a passenger steamship designed by Henry Bessemer after he suffered from seasickness in 1868. It featured a cabin mounted on gimbals, controlled by hydraulics and a spirit level, intended to stay level in rough seas. On her maiden voyage, the ship demolished part of the Calais pier, investor confidence was lost, and the vessel was scrapped.
Henry Bessemer held at least 129 patents, spanning from 1838 to 1883. They covered iron, steel, and glass, as well as military ordnance, movable dies for embossed postage stamps, a screw extruder to extract sugar from sugar cane, and the steel-making process that made him famous.