George Ritzer · Public domain

Coined "McDonaldization" in 1983 to describe how the fast-food industry's logic of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control had spread into schools, hospitals, and workplaces well beyond restaurants — an idea he developed into The McDonaldization of Society (1993), translated into more than twenty languages and among the best-selling sociology monographs ever written. His introductory textbooks have shaped how generations of undergraduates first encountered the discipline.