Experimental studies of rare B- and D-meson decays at CLEO

A review is presented of recent results of experimental studies of rare B- and D-meson decays with the CLEO detector at the Cornell e+e- collider CESR. The results are based upon 107 fully analyzed and simulated BB-bar pairs from Υ(4S) decays. The review includes a brief theoretical introduction and discussion of the CLEO detector and datasets. The physics results concern the precision measurement of the masses of the B+ and B0 and their relative production rates from the Υ(4S) resonance, the decay of B-mesons into two pseudo-scalar mesons and into a pseudo-scalar and a vector meson, polarization in the decay of B-mesons into two vector mesons, radiative B decays, and mixing in the BB-bar and DD-bar systems. Important new results were omitted due to time constraints. They include B decays to charmonium and to charmed baryons, and the search for CP-violation