Muriel Humphrey Brown,86, who overcame shyness to become an effective campaigner for her husband, Hubert H. Humphrey, then briefly took his U.S. Senate seat after his death, died yesterday of natural causes at Abbott Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Minneapolis.

Mrs. Brown rarely appeared in public in recent years but was by the side of her son, Hubert Humphrey III, last week when he won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor gubernatorial primary.

Mr. Humphrey, a Minnesota Democrat, unsuccessfully ran for president in 1972. He died Jan. 13, 1978 at age 66 after a long battle with cancer.

As widow of the state's most popular politician, she became the only woman to serve as senator from Minnesota when then-Gov. Rudy Perpich appointed her to the vacant seat in January 1978. She did not seek election that fall, leaving the Senate after nine months.

In 1979, she married Max Brown, a Nebraskan and lifelong Republican whom she met when the two were sixth-graders in Huron, S.D.

In addition to her husband and her son, Mrs. Brown is survived by a daughter, Nancy Solomonson, and two sons, Bob and Douglas Humphrey.

Pub Date: 9/21/98