[6] Their research was made possible after the French government purchased 185 kg of heavy water from Norsk Hydro and secretly flew it to France.

[7] Halban's marriage to his first wife Els (née Andriesse, who later married the Czech physicist George Placzek) ended in divorce.

In 1943, Halban married Aline Elisabeth Yvonne Strauss (née de Gunzbourg), who had escaped France in 1941 with her young son Michel.

Although he maintained that he did not divulge any nuclear secrets to Joliot-Curie, General Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, had Halban removed from his job in Montreal, and replaced by John Cockcroft.

After eight years at Oxford, Halban was invited back to France in 1954 by Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France to direct the building of a nuclear research laboratory at Saclay, outside Paris, which greatly expanded the French Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (Atomic Energy Commission).

He died on 28 November 1964 from complications following an unsuccessful heart operation at the American Hospital of Paris, leaving behind three children: Catherine Maud from his first marriage, and Pierre (Peter) and Philippe from his second.

[9] "Annotated Bibliography for Hans von Halban", Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues, WLU, archived from the original on 2010-08-04, retrieved 2020-01-08.