The Duke of Edinburgh said: "Everything that wasn't invented by God is invented by an engineer," on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme.
He was praising the vital work engineers do and said that they could play a much needed role in solving problems caused by population growth.
"The human population of the world is growing and is occupying more space.
"It's got to be accommodated somehow or another and I think most people would like to see it accommodates a certain amount of the natural world as well as the human world and everything that we required to keep it going."
It stressed that engineers will be the people that make these decisions and commented: "The whole of our infrastructure, from sewers to power supplies and communication, everything that wasn't invented by God is invented by an engineer."
Price Philip is a senior fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and said in The Telegraph that he first realised how important the role was during the war.
