A rational approach is needed to design hydrogenation catalysts that make use of Earth-abundant elements to replace the rare elements such as ruthenium, rhodium, and palladium that are traditionally used. Here, we validate a prior mechanistic hypothesis that partially saturated amine(imine)diphosphine ligands (P-NH-N-P) activate iron to catalyze the asymmetric reduction of the polar bonds of ketones and imines to valuable enantiopure alcohols and amines, with isopropanol as the hydrogen donor, at turnover frequencies as high as 200 per second at 28 degrees C. We present a direct synthetic approach to enantiopure ligands of this type that takes advantage of the iron(lI) ion as a template. The catalytic mechanism is elucidated by the spectroscopic detection of iron hydride and amide intermediates.