Highlights of a workshop on thermal problems of synchrotron radiation optics, a satellite meeting of the 4th International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation, will be presented. The most recent theoretical concepts and experimental results in studies of the thermal distortion of components exposed to the high heat loads of synchrotron radiation were discussed. Presentations were made on a variety of cooling techniques such as adaptive optical components, cryogenic cooling, nonstandard geometries (e.g., thin crystals and inclined crystals), and specialized materials (e.g., beryllium single crystals and multilayers), all of which attempt to mitigate the thermal effects on the performance of the x‐ray optical components.