Short answers, pulled from the story.
Robert Stephenson (1803-1859) was an English civil engineer and locomotive designer, the only son of George Stephenson, the Father of Railways. By 1850 he had been involved in the construction of a third of England's railway system and is considered one of the greatest engineers of the 19th century.
Robert Stephenson was the principal designer of the Rocket, which won the Rainhill trials on the 8th of October 1829. He fitted the boiler with twenty-five tubes of three-inch diameter to heat water more efficiently, an idea passed to him from his father via Henry Booth and Marc Seguin. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway purchased the Rocket after it averaged twelve miles per hour and exceeded twenty-nine miles per hour on the course.
The Dee bridge, which Robert Stephenson had designed for the Chester and Holyhead Railway, gave way under a passenger train on the 24th of May 1847. Five people died when the tender and carriages fell into the river. At the inquest, Robert was accused of manslaughter but a verdict of accidental death was returned after expert witnesses including Locke, Vignoles, and Gooch testified in his defence.
Robert Stephenson, William Fairbairn, and Eaton Hodgkinson designed the Britannia Bridge as a wrought-iron tubular structure 1,511 feet long with a single span 100 feet above water, as required by the Admiralty. They tested models in 1845 and 1846 and first used the design on the 400-foot Conwy Bridge to gain experience. A single line through the Britannia Bridge opened to public traffic on the 18th of March 1850.
Robert Stephenson sailed to South America on the 18th of June 1824 under a three-year contract to help the Colombian Mining Association reopen gold and silver mines in Gran Colombia. He investigated building a pier at La Guayra and a railway to Caracas, but concluded only the pier was financially viable. After his contract ended in July 1827, he met the stranded railway pioneer Richard Trevithick at Cartagena and gave him £50 for passage home.
Robert Stephenson twice declined a British knighthood, as his father George had done before him, giving no stated reason. He did accept several foreign honours: the Knight of the Order of Leopold from Belgium in 1841, the Knight of the Legion of Honour from France in 1855, and the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Olaf from Norway shortly before his death in 1859.