Robert Maynard Hutchins resigned yesterday as Chancellor of the University of Chicago to take a post as a director of the Ford Foundation. Paul G. Hoffman, former E.C.A. administrator and now president of the Foundation, announced the action last night.

The Ford Foundation, set up from the estates of the late Henry Ford, Sr, and Edsel Ford, controls $288,000,000 which it intends to spend for study and endeavor in five basic fields--peace, education, strengthening of democracy, economics, and human relations.

Its great stock of funds makes the Ford Foundation the wealthiest of the nation's philanthropic organizations; it surpasses both the Carnogie and Rockefeller Foundations.

Hutchins will officially be chancellor until June, but plans to take no active part in university affairs after January.

He has been with Chicago for 20 years. During that time he developed the famed Great Books curriculum and the Chicago study-at-your-own-speed program.

Dean David of the Business School is a trustee of the Foundation.

Ohester C. Davis, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was named the third director.

Goneral of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower took a leave of absence as President of Columbia University yesterday to accept the command of the International Army in Europe.

His command is being formed solely for "the preservation of peace," Eisenhower said. The General said that a location for his new headquarters had not yet been picked but that Fontainbleu and Varsailles, both outside Paris, were possibilities.

Eisenhower said he regretted leaving Columbia when activities he directed "are just reaching fruition." As soon as he completes his "duty as a soldier," he said, he wants to get back to the kind of administrative work he has been doing at Columbia.

Before Eisenhowre took office at Columbia, the university was run by Acting President Frank D. Fackenthal, who assumed administrative duties after the retirement of the late Nicholas Murray Butler in 1944. Fackenthal is still active in the Columbia administration.

The General said yesterday that he did not intend to go abroad until he had concluded a series of conferences in Washington to discuss high policy and staff appointments.