Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Boston metropolitan area. Situated directly north of the city of Boston, across the Charles River, it was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent universities, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge has also been home to Radcliffe College, once one of the leading colleges for women in the United States before it merged with Harvard. According to the 2010 Census, the city's population was 105,162. , it was the fifth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Lowell. Cambridge was one of the two seats of Middlesex County prior to the abolition of county government in 1997; Lowell was the other.