h number

What is the best quantitative measure of a person's quality of research? This is an interesting problem since tenure decisions are judged by many people who don't work directly in the candidate's field. It would be good to have something like an SAT score as a benchmark.

I learned today about one promising measure called h number. As Eugene Wallingford explains, your h number is determined in the following way. Suppose you have n publications. Your h number is determined by having h publications with >= h citations each and (n-h) publications with < h citations each.

I won't bother to calculate my own h number since I have a mere two publications...