The term "hysteresis" is derived from , an Ancient Greek word meaning "deficiency" or "lagging behind". It was coined in 1881 by Sir James Alfred Ewing to describe the behaviour of magnetic materials.
Some early work on describing hysteresis in mechanical systems was performed by James Clerk Maxwell. Subsequently, hysteretic models have received significant attention in the works of Ferenc Preisach (Preisach model of hysteresis), Louis Néel and Douglas Hugh Everett in connection with magnetism and absorption. A more formal mathematical theory of systems with hysteresis was developed in the 1970s by a group of Russian mathematicians led by Mark Krasnosel'skii.