Short answers, pulled from the story.
Robert Falcon Scott and his four companions reached the South Pole on the 17th of January 1912. They found a tent left by Roald Amundsen's expedition, along with a letter dated the 18th of December, confirming Amundsen had beaten them by approximately five weeks.
Robert Falcon Scott died on or around the 29th of March 1912 during the return march from the South Pole, trapped in a tent by a fierce blizzard approximately 12.5 miles from One Ton Depot. His companions Edgar Evans and Lawrence Oates had already died; Scott is believed to have been the last of the three remaining men to die.
Scott had issued written orders on the 20th of October 1911 for the dog driver Meares to travel south and meet the returning polar party near latitude 82 on the 1st of March. Instead, the officer left in charge at base camp, Atkinson, delayed his departure, encountered the scurvy-stricken Teddy Evans, and ultimately sent the short-sighted and non-navigating Cherry-Garrard only as far as One Ton Depot on the 25th of February, effectively canceling the rendezvous. Scott reached the 82-degree meeting point three days ahead of schedule but found no dogs waiting.
Scott's party carried 35 pounds of Glossopteris tree fossils on their sleds even during the fatal return march. These were the first Antarctic fossils ever discovered, and they proved that Antarctica was once warm, forested, and connected to other continents.
Scott was celebrated as a national hero immediately after his death in 1912. Roland Huntford's 1979 biography recast him as a "heroic bungler," and that critical view became dominant for decades. In the 21st century, meteorologist Susan Solomon's 2001 study The Coldest March and Karen May's 2012 discovery of Scott's written orders for the dog teams both shifted scholarly opinion back toward a more sympathetic assessment of Scott.
Scott's first Antarctic expedition was the Discovery Expedition of 1901-04, a joint enterprise of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society. Scott, Ernest Shackleton, and Edward Wilson marched to a latitude of 82 degrees 17 minutes south, setting a new southern record, and Scott's later western journey led to the discovery of the Antarctic Plateau on which the South Pole is located.