Derck received his BA in Physics from Chico State College in 1967 and, after a hiatus of several years, returned to academia for a PhD in Astrophysics from CU Boulder. Upon completing a Post-Doc at UW Madison, he joined Applied Research Corporation as a NASA contractor at Goddard Space Flight Center, where he split his time between NASA projects and research. His project work centered on instrument characterization and calibration and science data pipeline design for several spacecraft, including COBE, IUE, and FUSE. Before joining SSI, he was an Instrument Scientist at STScI, involved in the calibration and characterization of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on HST. Derck's research focused on interstellar dust, the winds of hot stars, binary Cepheids and various calibration issues. He was a PI on guest observing programs for NASA missions spanning the electromagnetic spectrum, including IUE, HST, FUSE, Chandra and Spitzer. At SSI, his research involved the winds of LMC O stars, the cause of wind variability in the central stars planetary nebula, the systematics of dust absorption in the local interstellar medium and the origin of IR excesses in LMC and SMC O and B stars. He enjoyed almost anything with wheels.

Derck was a keen scientist and was instrumental in a number of astronomical research programs that have pushed the field forward. He will be sorely missed by his colleagues and friends at SSI, as well as the wider astronomy and astrophysics community.

Some of Derck's papers:

• Massa, D., Savage, B. D., & Fitzpatrick, E. L. (1983). Peculiar ultraviolet interstellar extinction. The Astrophysical Journal, 266, 662-683. DOI: 10.1086/160813 | ADS
• Massa, D., & Fitzpatrick, E. L. (1986). Ultraviolet Extinction toward Five Open Clusters, and the Accuracy of IUE Extinction Measurements. The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 60, 305. DOI: 10.1086/191088 | ADS
• Massa, D. (1989). The UV silicon spectra of early B stars. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 224, 131-140. ADS
• Massa, D. (1975). The influence of rotation and stellar winds upon the Be phenomenon. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 87, 777-784. DOI: 10.1086/129842 | ADS

Derck also worked with Edward Fitzpatrick for ~40 years on a series of highly influential papers on interstellar extinction (the "Fitzpatrick and Massa" series) from the UV through the infrared.