As the world eagerly waits for the naming of the Nobel Peace prize winner on Friday, a lawyer who authored a book on the Nobel Peace Prize awards questioned the selection of some past winners.

Included in his list of undeserving awardees, based on the criteria set by Alfred Nobel in his 1895 last will and testament, was 2007 Peace Prize winner former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and Mother Theresa of Calcutta.

Norwegian lawyer Fredrik Heffermehl, who wrote the book "Nobel's Will," told Aftenposten Nobel wanted to promote disarmament and anti-militarism. Based on these criteria, of the 118 Peace Prize winners from 1901 to 2007, until 1940, 85 percent of the awardees met the criteria. But after 1940, only 45 percent met Nobel's criteria, Heffermehl theorized.

He pointed to the influence of Norway's political parties and private commercial interests on the Nobel committee as the reason behind the grant of the Peace Prize to "unworthy."

Following this thinking, Heffermehl said 1979 awardee Mother Theresa was far from the idea that Nobel wanted to push for as a champion of peace. Other past winners whom he said were not deserving included the joint awardees in 1994, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin.

Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Nobel Committee, disputed Heffermehl's theory. Using the lawyer's criteria, he said the first Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1901, Red Cross founder Jean Henry Dunant, would not have qualified.