Royal fans went wild on Wednesday after the Prince of Wales sported a lab coat during a visit to a finalist in his decade-long environmental Earthshot Prize awards project.

Prince William visited NatureMetrics, a company based in Guildford, to learn more about its work analysing environmental data to provide clients with a comprehensive map of life in a forest, lake or even the air.

The future king was given a tour of the company’s nearby labs and he donned a white coat and gloves to help in the first steps of extracting DNA from a sample.

He was shown the rest of the process, including a DNA extraction machine that produces the DNA code sequence that allows the team to identify everything from bacteria to a blue whale.

Meanwhile, fans went into a right royal frenzy as they couldn’t get enough of the royal’s outfit.

One user wrote on X: “Prince William looks like a hot college professor this morning!”

A second one agreed: “Prince William making a lab coat look hot.”

A third one said: “Oh.. hello, Professor Wales [heart eyes emoji]”

A fourth one added: “Professor Wales in the house!”

A fifth one commented: “His Royal Hotness.”

A sixth one chimed: “Whatever he’s teaching please sign me up!”

The prince told NatureMetrics’ chief executive officer Dimple Patel: “So much of what the environmental world needs right now is data. This is fantastic you guys have got this ability to be able to tell us what’s really there.

“There’s a lot of guesswork, there’s a lot of painstaking volunteers and science going into this, but actually what we need is to be able to understand bigger, large-scale projects as to what is in each area.”

NatureMetric has more than 600 clients in 110 countries and they include Forestry England, Nestle, Unilever and wildlife conservation organisation WWF.

The company has recently secured £20million of investment, raised with support from the Earthshot Prize’s investment platform Launchpad.