Order of authorship in the original publication: Relman, Schmidt, MacDermott....The authors used 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing to identify the bacillus associated with Whipple's disease that had resisted culturing methods for more than 80 years. Based on its unique characteristics and its association with an illness that leads to emaciation by interferring with intestinal absorption of nutrients they named it "Tropheryma whippelii gen. nov. sp. nov."  Digital facsimile from nejm.org at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)