Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and part of the Boston metropolitan area.Situated directly north of Boston, across the Charles River, it was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders.Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, two of the world's most prestigious universities, are in Cambridge, as was Radcliffe College, one of the leading colleges for women in the United States until it merged with Harvard.According to the 2010 Census, the city's population was 105,162. As of July 2014, 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 until the abolition of county government in 1997; Lowell was the other.