The paper deals with the non-iterative inverse determination of the temperature-dependent thermal conductivity in 2-D steady-state heat conduction problem. The thermal conductivity is modeled as a polynomial function of temperature with the unknown coefficients. The identification of the thermal conductivity is obtained by using the boundary data and additionally from the knowledge of temperature inside the domain. The method of fundamental solutions is used to solve the 2-D heat conduction problem. The golden section search is used to find the optimal place for pseudo-boundary on which are placed the singularities in the frame of method of fundamental solutions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.