The names of his real parents, Nicolay Ochsner, an ensign in the reserve and a farmer, and his mother Wilgelmine (née Schwartz), are on his birth certificate.
However, he grew up with the families of his foster mother Zinaida Lazarevna Solomonova and her brother Mozyrj Lazarevich Solomonov.
At university Oxner heard lectures from and was influenced by prominent Soviet scientists such as Aleksandr Fomin, Mykola Kholodny, and Ivan Schmalhausen.
From 1920 to 1924 he worked as a teacher in secondary schools, then he was engaged in teaching at the Kirovograd Agricultural College.
In his spare time he studied the local flora, and subsequently published one of his first scientific papers, entitled "Some rare plants of the Zinov’iv District of the Kherson Region".
[2] As a student Oxner undertook several botanical expeditions to Ukraine and Belarus, where he collected many plants, mosses, and lichens.
[2] In 1926, Oxner became a senior researcher at the Department of Botany of the People's Commissariat for Education of the Ukrainian SSR.
In 1935 he received his candidate degree in biological sciences without defending a dissertation (a distinction called honoris causa).
World War II interrupted his studies, and in 1942 he evacuated to Kirov, working there as a teacher at a secondary school.