I think that Head is on the list. My dad's company, Bostik, made the adhesive that held the wood cored Standard together, in terms of the base, topsheets, sidewalls.....the works. You are right, Howard Head was an engineer, an not a long term skier.
Howard Head did not invent, and was not the first to produce a ski with a continuous metal edge. But he was the first to make them on volume. The first were the Chris ski, made in CT. It's always been my understanding that he closed his ski company fairly quickly {the skis were not that good}, but that he did pretty well for a number of years as a result of a patent on the edge design. My dad probably only told me that story 1000 times, because my dad's college roommate was the guy who made that deal for Head.
My mom was a pretty serious athlete, and played a lot of tournament tennis. I can recall HH sending her 3-4 of his early Prince design prototypes. He told her that he knew they looked really foolish, but he wanted her opinion, and begged her to at least hit a fair amount with it. I think she and others helped him out, as the racquet had a huge sweet spot compared to everything out there....and was easy to play as a game improvement tool. She stuck with a wooden Dunlop Maxply for a number of years! Could not be seen hitting a Prince back then.
The guy was a genius. I recall when the 360 was introduced, and began to get traction. It seemed like every adult I knew was on the ski, unless they were real "experts". Both of my parents had been ski racers, and they both skied the Head Vector, later the Vector Comp, then the Comp. Pretty unusual for my Mom at the time. By the mid 60's, they had moved on to this new fiberglass stuff.
The success of Head skis did a LOT for the success of Bostik as an adhesive in the ski business. Which did a lot for the number of skis that came into our house. And for a lot of neat family vacations. Even better travel for my parents.
Many also credit Head with indirectly leading to the development on the Rossi series of Allais metal race skis, which pretty much owned the DH world through the mid 60's......until Killy dominated the sport on his Dynamic VR17's. Emile Allais pretty much engineered his skis by cutting up a bunch of Head race skis, as it's been told to me. I think they improved the core, and had access to better base material in particular. Also easier to build the ski, test, then tweak in a shorter time frame.
I think it's neat that the Head brand name lives on. It's had a number of turns and twists!
I absolutely would put Volant on this list, Rossignol, Dynamic. Dynafit, and Lange. Salomon. Marker, I think, Look. Scott Poles. Maybe even Head 2.0. I think that Atomic should be, but I'm not sure of the exact reason why....other than race results.
Need to think some more. Makes me think about Volkl, and some of the custom, premium skis. Depends on how far back you go. Kastle was the race ski between the early 50's and 1964.
Would not be surprised to see Renoun on such a list in 10-15 years. Seems like a design breakthrough.
Fun stuff.