Halban was divorced from his first wife, Els (née Andriesse, who later married the Czech physicist George Placzek). And in 1943, Halban married Aline Elisabeth Yvonne Strauss (née de Gunzbourg), who had escaped France in 1941 with her young son Michel.[8] This marriage would also end in divorce, Aline marrying the philosopher Isaiah Berlin in 1958.[8]